No money for poverty.
No money for food in schools.
And why would our government, as Key has noted there are hardly any kids needing food in the schools he visits?
Will the government have some spare for some millionaires and billionaires needing a handout?
No no no Paul you have got it wrong, think of all the jobs it will bring to NZ if the cup comes back to NZ. All those additional waiters and servants required on zero hours contracts.
sarc/
What about all the boat builders up and down the country.
Jobs well paid high skilled well paid jobs.
The boat building industry has grown from $120 million a year to $2 billion a year on the back of New technology and high quality workmanship.
After all the investment New Zealand has made in this high value industry it would be very foolish to throw it all away!
I have studied economics for a long time now,One big growth trend is making money out of wealthy people.
Its one Area in manfacturing that we are World leaders we can not afford to loose our edge.
7 Out of 10 America,s cup boats were built right here in New Zealand the GST payments off just this section of the boat building industry.
We also build super yatchs having our industry on show in Bermuda!
Its time we took the bull by the horns and looked for other niche manufacturing industries which New Zealand is good at and target the uber rich they have deep pockets and pay well.
Taxing them doesn,t work that well as they buy goverment or move their money to where they Don,t pay any tax!
Targeting products they buy and suppling the wealthy with high value high quality products is much smarter long term!
How many boat builders were able to employ more people at good wages after the 8 straight losses at the last exhibition of obscene wealth being blown around by the wind? Possibly less than we would have had without the stupid race.
Oh why not turn our entire economy into one designed to serve the 0.1%?
Won’t that be fun and fulfilling for everyone else?
At the end of the day however, such an economy doesn’t add up. Building McYachts, McMansions and selling McSUVs won’t form the backbone of any worthwhile civilisation.
CR
You are so right. While we wait for the situation to be redeemed maybe we should try to keep some industry afloat in NZ, something that’s in water and not milk.
How much money would have to come into the country in boat building revenue to get 34million in tax off it . have to say I loved watching those big boats fly.
I have studied economics for a long time now,One big growth trend is making money out of wealthy people.
Yeah, so have I. The problem is that you’re not talking economics there but finances which is a completely different kettle of fish.
Economics is about managing limited resources, specifically, minimising their use. If the economics you champion results in ever greater use of those resources then it is uneconomic.
I haven’t visited Auckland much, but I was there for a week recently. Two images have stuck in my mind: a yacht crew carrying their gear through the viaduct, emblazoned with brands and wearing sunglasses that cost more than I earn in a week, and the guys sleeping the the doorways of the city mission, next to the YMCA where I was staying.
Sadly, i think KDC should have saved his money for the yachties. It might well have had more impact on his position.
Would be OK if we actually won the damn thing, which to do you much actually be in front of the other boat when you cross the finish line. Despite what people might think, you cannot win the America’s Cup just by turning up to the race.
We have all moved on from 1995 and Peter Blake’s red socks.
The whole thing’s become a circus anyway. It used to be, that it you wanted to host an America’s Cup regatta, you had a win the thing. Now you can just write a cheque out and you get it anyway.
Peter Blake’s money raising red socks – buy and donate to the NZ challenging the big boys cause – not made in NZ red socks.
That is so common now it is a cliche. Even the RSA got their red poppies to remember the NZ fallen sourced from overseas – I think from Aussies who probably ordered them from Asia. e&oe This is conjecture though.
edited
Hope they do as it reinforces the govt priorities of the wealthy elite first…..another brick in the wall of arrogance muddle nz need to wake up to given such issues as you’ve highlighted Paul.
It used to be about boat racing, now it’s about the size of billionaires dicks or wannabes like JK.
4. Degrade education so more charter schools can be set up ready for privatisation of education.
5. Degrade Health system so more private institutions and insurance can be set up ready for privatisation of health.
If you want to see our future under Key, just look at New Orleans in the U.S. , where shock doctrine was applied after Katrina to privatise education.
As for Health, watch Michael Moore’s Sicko to get a feel for the health policy Key and his cronies are prepared to deliver for their banking and corporate masters.
Apologies to all concerned, including Judith. She is into her rhythm .. good to see musical talent in the cabinet. The cropped image gave a different impression.
She is well-known for her gentle, mild and co-operative, inclusive manner.
I’ve just finished, as in five minutes ago, reading “Dirty Politics”. Sarcasm is the gentlest form of response to Judith Collins and her style of politics that I can muster.
Nicky Hager didn’t do anything for her to lose her cabinet position. She was brought down by the members of her own DP side, people like Slater, Odgers and Key, remember?
Picture of Judith – Poor Judith – a difficult moment in the smallest room in the backbenchers’ lobby looks to me. A concerted attempt to negate the resonating charge – “You’re full of it Jude !”
For those of you who think that spying was only a problem in East European countries and it was them damn Russkies who where so evil that they killed millions of their own for merely speaking truth to power, here is a nice history of the elite spying on their own people in the Western world. All 5000 years of it:
5,000 Years of History Shows that Mass Spying Is Always Aimed at Crushing Dissent
The other thing that concerns me is the fact that there is an incentive for groups like the GCSB, the SIS and the Police to favour right wing governments because RW govts will increase powers of surveillance. The actions or inactions on the Hager/Slater and Jon Stephenson reinforce my view that these groups are becoming more active in discouraging any dissent, almost as if they are sending out a warning to dissenters to intimidate them. How can environmentalists be regarded as “terrorists”? There was a good interview of Jason N Parkinson on Nine to Noon on the UK surveillance of journalists.
Those interested in the surveillance state expansion would be interested in thes interview with a Brit journalist this morning on Radio NZ. I heard part of it and remember him saying that he is a journalist who regularly covers protests and exposes behaviours on the left or right that are outside correct and lawful practices.
He commented that he had applied to see his secret service file and finally got it by knowing the small print and file No. to ask for and found how much stuff was on him. Exhaustive contents. Also environmental protests were noted and his work and contacts on those, yet one he did on some right wing outfit that started in 2009 and was revealed to be plotting events, with one Brit solder making nail bombs in his bedroom on his days off, was not mentioned.
It sounds as if the police are paranoid and definitely harrassed him as a registered journalist going about his lawful business. I think he said that in 2007 it seemed to be hotting up and in that year he was stopped, I think, 23 times and questioned while on his way to report some left-wing type of event.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/20159785
British journalists spied on by state, put on extremist list ( 24′ 12″ )
09:20 Jason N Parkinson is a freelance video journalist, who covers subjects ranging from environmental disaster to conflict. He was nominated for the Rory Peck News Award for his work during the Egyptian revolution and in London during the riots.
Jason is one of six members of the British National Union of Journalists who are asking the English High Court for a judicial review of the collection and retention of surveillance data about them. He says he and other journalists were subject to wide-ranging surveillance and put on a domestic extremist list, simply for doing their jobs.
Most interesting in this Zero Hedge article are the comments – people scrimping and saving, unable or unwilling to spend money in restaurants and bars any more, going to home brew instead of buying a beer.
Meanwhile in April this year, NYC apartment prices hit record highs of US$970K. Sounds very much like a tale of two cities eh. For the 1%, and that for everyone else.
The same is happening here in AKL. I have a small shop, hand made chocolates and the likes, and I can tell you from daily experience that people are counting the pennies, and then then turn them over a few times before spending them.
I am still doing well enough to keep myself and the two shop girls busy, but it should not get any worse.
But I guess you are not going to see an article in the NZ Herald about peeps not buying boats and big SUV on the paper value of their not yet paid off houses.
It is not a tale of two cities, it is a tale of a hand full of very rich against the rest of the country.
Well, retail and the service sector in Dunedin are definitely struggling at the moment (although as always there are stronger sectors and weaker ones). And looking around what should be the centre of town there are far too many empty commercial lots, many of them large, and a number of which have been untenanted for 6 months or more.
What no one is looking forward to is the flow on effect of lower milk prices…
Meanwhile the capitalists rub their hands and praise the prospect of doing business with the burgeoning middle class in China and India. The old middle class in USA has been decimated (into deciles) by their country’s business corporate machinations with their politicians. That is, the western capitalists have fouled their own nest but no matter, find a new nest to foul overseas and leave the chicks to rot in the old one.
I’m most impressed with David Parker who has regrouped after losing the leadership contest, and come out swinging strongly from the back benches, well done chap. Parker is absolutely correct that PC Plod are dragging their heels over investigating some of Hager’s claims.
The Fuzz are playing favourites, and I would like to know who is pulling their strings and why?
“Now I can’t name either of those sources and I can’t prove those allegations to be true and they are both hearsay allegations to me, but these allegations must be investigated.”
Littles doing well but he doesn’t need chumps like Parker dragging him down
I disagree, Little was doing well, till he supported the terror legislation. That just reminds me, as it should remind others – Labour are nothing but a bunch of corporate elects.
Well I think he showed pragmatism on that, its fine to be all tub thumping to appeal to your core but when you get the information you then have to do the right thing by your country and if hes elected leader then hes the leader of the whole of NZ not just the anti-war left
So on this its no negative feedback for Little
Anti-war, misdirection and diversion? I’m not anti-war – I just don’t see the point in fighting wars for other countries/corporations. This piece of legislation is an attack on civil liberties, I’d have thought the right wing were fan’s of freedom. As I get older, I’m finding they are not.
So let me be the voice of freedom – I don’t want my freedoms stomped on because your a little scaredy cat – who jumps at your own shadow. I’m over wimps on the right, who feel they are justified to feed their paranoia and fear to the general population.
The big bad terrorist ,is a lie – bit like the big bad communist lie. Just change the rhetoric from the 1950’s to now.
ISIS is falling apart, if we strangle off the money coming from the Saudi Arabia and others. Their days would be severely numbered. Good old economic terrorism that the west is good at. Why do we need to put troops on the ground? We don’t.
How can I be so confident ISIS is fubar? They have completely wiped out the middle classes, either in a physical sense or in the fact most of the professional classes are running away from them. How long do you think they will be able to operate a modern society, without a professional class? And failing that, how long do you think they will be able to contain a youthful population look at the luxury and lifestyle modernism has to offer? ISIS is a pitiful joke, and only nut jobs who want to send our young men and women off to die, seem to be under the illusion that this whacked out army of boy jihadists aren’t going to eat themselves – if we do the right thing, and cut the money off.
You are assuming they want a modern society which I doubt they want to go back to the dark ages were believing in mythical being’s are used to control the youthful population.
ISIS is something that needs to be stopped but they need to be stopped by the people who live there. If they’re stopped by those from outside then they’ll just arise again in a probably worse form.
We also need to work out why young men from all over Europe (the world?) are joining up to fight for groups for ISIS. It seems to me we are have thrown a whole generation of young people on the scrap heap, called them lazy and useless, and then wonder why they are starting to like what the bloke down at the local mosque has to say.
+100 Draco. Could not agree more. But lets help the people there, by stopping ISIS getting the money from supporters around the region, and lets stop pretending Saudi Arabia is an ally of ours.
i dunno skinny..parker is still number one on my list of mp’s ‘most likely to go postal’..
..there is much grindingly-unfufilled there..anger both seethes and drips from him..it has even made his face all puffy/blotchy..and his voice has changed..all dangerous signs..)
..(in other recent moves on that list..brownlee has jumped to number two..and tho’ he is minister of defence..i wd advise he be kept well clear of any actual weapons..
..and of course.kennedy graham..with his death-ray eyes/gaze is always somewhere in the top five..
..and foss-the-hapless often seems to be barely hanging on..so is also there..)
Ngati poaka don’t need their strings pulled. They know instinctively where their loyalties lie. In that respect, they’re a lot like journalists. What they both need is continuous pressure to do their jobs properly.
Is there anyone here, artist/cartoonist, that can draw a caricature of Key, with the Pinocchio’s long nose, with his pants on fire, hands raised high up in the air like Nixon’s and a speech bubble coming out of his bum with the words, “Awkchully, honestly speaking, at the end of the day, I don’t lie!”
Yes Trans Tasman do seem to have been getting steadily dafter and right over the years. Their analysis used to be pretty good with a known slant.
But everything I have seen in recent years can be characterized as being written by a wingnut and one with a similar political and economic skill level to Mike Hoskings – ie more characterized by bigotry than analysis.
At a superficial glance, he does seem preferable to idiots like Abbott and Bjelke-Newman. However, with a second glance you see that the only difference is in the presentation. They’re all as thick, dishonest, and arrogant as each other.
The single most significant task facing Aotearoa –
IMO it is identifying exactly how much and which areas of our land are now in foreign ownership, or longterm leasehold. When the land is gone, what do have? Who are we? Do we even exist as a nation? There is an urgent need for a comprehensive audit of this, with publication of the results, as well as the basic register of foreign owners.
Will be a useless register while folks can fly in from China for a weekend on a visa given because of their gold credit card status and buy as much property as they wish to purchase, tax-free with money borrowed at 0.5% in China and easy to get into NZ due to direct currency trading now of Chinese renmimbi to NZ dollars. (Thanks JK.)
I’m not xenophobic, but reporting facts. One Chinese ‘tourist’ man can be identified as now owning 50 houses in Auckland by doing exactly as I have written above.
Where to begin to correct this ? Well said, Manuka AOR –beyond urgent, isn’t it.
Why are we just letting it go on? It’s a kind of insanity, imo.
This is our LAND! This is our Nation. This is what and who we are.
The Gallipoli Centenary is approaching and they are making much of it. Our ancestors fought there so that we could have this land. Several of mine were there and not all returned. They in turn lost sons during WW II for the same reason – that we could have a country that was ours, that was free.
We are throwing this all away!!
I don’t begin to comprehend it.
It is not just Auckland, and it is not just John Key.
Anecdotally, there are many ‘banked’ properties reported in Sydney and Melbourne
– see ‘www.catherinecashmore.com.au’ who has just published
“SPECULATIVE VACANCIES 7” which I think can be downloaded from that link.
One has to be careful due to echoes of the ‘White Australia’ policy but there is also evidence that the China boom has peaked in many markets and there are cities of unsold apartments in China itself.
A global bubble is playing out – and given levels of unsustainable debt in some quarters most rational observers are hoping for a soft landing.
Whether that will happen is another story, but Aotearoa is a very small player in all this.
@ Wairua
There are reports of empty apartments that have replaced old housing which was being lived in. The new is of course too dear for the previous dwellers to rent. I remember reading about it. Also there has been much money spent on infrastructure and city building as in the empty apartments.
It seems to me a deliberate policy to turn earnings and profits into tangible assets, as the future of the financial system is uncertain. Profits left sitting can be undermined by inflation, and deliberate crashing of the financial system which would wipe out the previous Chinese accumulated credits.
I think the Chinese are being canny and converting the paper money into bricks and steel. Perhaps the message of the Yip Harburg song about Al the hard worker, now beggar, of the USA in Buddy Can You Spare a Dime has been received loud and clear by the Chinese. They don’t want to be the Als, with a lot of useless money. This version is probably the best you’ll hear and see and uses the word Buddy rather than Brother which seems less authentic.
It seems to me a deliberate policy to turn earnings and profits into tangible assets, as the future of the financial system is uncertain
Yes, but what they’ve done is turn housing into yet another speculative financial asset. Collateral which is hypothecated then rehypothecated, leveraged then overleveraged, then securitised and sold on to unsuspecting investors. Certainly an apartment block is more “concrete” than $10M of numbers in an electronic account which can be “vapourised” at a key stroke, but the way it is being treated now – like dairy farms which will soon never be able to pay back their mortagages – makes them worth little more than unaffordable McMansion junk.
And that’s assuming all these units which have been built with nothing more than profit in mind, don’t leak.
CR
That’s a good point. Just thinking of the reality of leaky buildings which we found here. Leave them for a while and they can be full of deadly fungus that gets up people’s noses, literally. And nearly possible to eradicate. In apartment buildings they would have to spray individual apartments then possibly gas them as well and leave them closed for a time to penetrate and kill the organisms. Then leave them open for a week, then probably have to turn fans on as some of the gas might be heavier than air or something.
One of the problems with rented buildings in NZ is people don’t open their windows to let fresh air in. Perhaps because of fear of burglars, or they aren’t used to the concept of airing rooms and having fresh air and sunshine coming in. Leaving the windows closed all the time leads to a build-up of mould, which is preventable if the rooms are aired daily with a flow from one side of the house to the other. I haven’t heard this mentioned when damp, unhealthy houses are mentioned, but some people have to be educated apparently as to such good and necessary practice. They should fit their own burglar and child proof attachments to one window in every room if the landlord won’t do it.
Sportspeople, past and present, are generally brainless, conformist halfwits—New Zealanders will be all too familiar with such unedifying and depressing examples as Israel Dagg, Corey Jane, that dopey mustachioed rower who barracked for John Key, Dick Quax, Paul Quinn… the list is too long and depressing to finish, but you get the picture.
But there ARE genuinely thoughtful, decent people involved in sports. Here are just a few of them…..
Sorry should have added massive generalization and incredibly petty and small minded judging an extremely large group of people by a very small group of drop kicks
Yep. And how about the cries here in Chch from rich professional sports business people for elderly ratepayers to pay for a new stadium with a roof to keep their heads dry and warm when they can’t even fill the current stadium?? And when we are struggling to pay for replacement sewers and roads and libraries and swimming pools for the kids??
Quite astounding.
Funny though that most of those rich sports business people have realised their folly and gone quiet in embarassment. They no longer ask for the poor and elderly ratepayers to pay for their work premises.
Nothing wrong with the occasional generalisation – there is generally something in said generalisations..
And it aint just people running such sports (cycling types are always calling for the elderly to pay for their velodromes too) who make this call, it is too often the players and participants themselves. It is heard all the time amongst general sports talk.
Cricket has just been given such largesse in Chch with new Hagley Park grounds.
It is a classic race to the bottom – best example being the Olympics. Olympics plays off cities against one another to see who can do the best deal. End result being that all host cities end up chronically in debt with pretty much no benefit whatsoever.
Sport has been riding this game for a while now – be interesting to see how much longer it lasts. Personally, I think cities should call the bluff of the rugby unions, the Olympics committees, the velodrome nutters, the Americas cup bludgers, the V8 racers, and give them zip. If they don’t come then so f%$king what? Net result is a win for the cities as these events always cost – there is never a net benefit.
massive generalization and incredibly petty and small minded judging an extremely large group of people by a very small group of drop kicks
Yeah, in the same way beneficiaries and the parents of poor children are depicted when tories claim that the parents waste any money on booze, drugs, and cigarettes.
Well sports is one of the areas where left and right wingers can and do interact
The rugby club used to be a microcosm of NZ society (not always in a good way i grant you) where blue collar and white collar got on and discussed the importanct issues of the day (well probably not)
Just thinking that lumping the majority of sportspeople who play for the love of the game in with the administrators of tha games (which is where the problems usually begin) is a quite short sighted
I can’t be the only one who thinks its a great sight going past (or when i get roped in myself) touch fields filled with all kinds of people playing simply because its enjoyable
Surely you must still pass them on occasion, and think it’s a great sight that parents and kids of all backgrounds can get together for the simple joy of social interaction?
Crude generalization of what are in fact complex groupings of real people is just bigotry, and to prove the superior moral tone of the left, there will be no more of it on this blog.
The exception being when the generalisation is based on a characterisation by which the groupings are delineated – calling tories “fuckwits”, for example, is merely a description that emphasises one of the characteristics that makes a tory a tory.
True that.
For a start I have a life outside of left wing blogs.
And I pride myself on taking any point head on and trying to grapple with it, rather than attempting to lead the discussion up a side road every time I strike a sharp retort.
yup, and I see all people as genuine and real and worthy of respect, in all their endless variation of political opinion, as opposed to a simplistic division into 2 camps of saints and fuckwits…
But I’m probably eating up your band width here, so back to you.
I don’t need to trool opposing blogsites to provoke negative reactions that I can then use to pretend that my life has any level of meaning or significance in the universe and reinflate my delusional sense of adequacy. That’s all you.
Good one, Morrissey. Had no idea about Barthez’s protest against Israel’s brutality back in 05. It’s pretty rare for me to praise a former Man Utd player (or, indeed, anyone or anything to do with that particular club) but good on him.
1960 AB Tour of Apartheid South Africa. Certainly the great George Nepia protested. By the early 70s, Ken Gray and Chris Laidlaw had moved in the same direction and, of course, by 81 AB Captain Graham Mourie and Centre, Bruce Robertson.
Incidentally, Frank Bunce (from memory) was the main (possibly only ?) Celebrity endorser for the Alliance in the 1996 (or was it 99 ?) election campaign. Starkly contrasting with the Michael Jones, Paul Quinns and Tuigamalas of this world.
Overall, though, I think it’s reasonable to conclude that professional sportspeople do indeed tend to be as Thick as Mince.
Overall, though, I think it’s reasonable to conclude that sportspeople do indeed tend to be as Thick as Mince.
– no thats quite unreasonable when you look at the number of people who play sport vs the drop kicks who bring the game into disrepute
As an example theres a little over 145 000 registered rugby players, 140 000 approx registered Netball players NZ and around 22 000 registered league players in NZ
Yeah, I immediately edited in professional just to add a little more clarity and precision (presumably while you were in the middle of composing your reply).
Personally, I played football (ie soccer) from age 8 to 39 (competitively on Saturday, socially on Sunday, and the Indoor variety during the week).
“1960 AB Tour of Apartheid South Africa. Certainly the great George Nepia protested. By the early 70s, Ken Gray and Chris Laidlaw had moved in the same direction and, of course, by 81 AB Captain Graham Mourie and Centre, Bruce Robertson.”
I have noticed that the men who you mentioned seem to have had their talents largely unutilized by the NZRFU after their careers came to an end, apart from a breif stint coaching the Hurricanes/Lions in Mourie’s case. while those that went on the 1986 rebel Cavaliers tour ended up enjoying large amounts of oppurtunities in administration and coaching long after their playing careers ended.
Of course, it could be purely co-incidental. and talking to any administrator from around that era would come up with a truck load of denials. But it does seem fishy, that those who stood up against NZ Rugby’s contact with SA seemed to find their rugby careers curtailed.
Morrissey, do you have any idea why Graham Bell is invited on the Panel?
He’s a celebrity, and he expresses himself forcefully. That works well on radio.
I don’t understand why his boorish ill educated views are sought after.
I agree with you that he often sounds boorish, and I have often cringed—or raged—at some of the things he has said. Today, for instance, he tried to argue that the arrest of a top cop in Northland for selling drugs showed how incorruptible the New Zealand Police are. Disappointingly, neither the host Simon Mercep nor Selwyn Manning decided to challenge him on that point. Bell also made a crazed attack on Nicky Hager; Mercep and Manning let that pass as well.
On the other hand, Graham Bell does have an enlightened and tolerant side; he was relatively civilized and intelligent when he commented on the need to respect Maori protocols and language a few years ago.
6.) World-renowned Kiwi netball champion, Irene Van Dyk, has given her backing to the #BeCrueltyFree New Zealand campaign for a ban on cruel and outdated animal testing for cosmetics such as mascara, shampoo and anti-wrinkle cream.
That’s good to hear. However, I have heard her on several occasions ranting about how dangerous South Africa is “now”, implying it wasn’t dangerous before the blacks took over. Talk to a white South African, and there’s a high probability that kind of lazy racist rhetoric will spill forth eventually.
During the apartheid years, the primary violence (I think) was the institutional injustice and violence from the white government and the powerful white landowners against the blacks. Now the violence is primarily due to economic, drug, gang reasons I think. I am not sure as I am not familiar with the actual situation there apart from reading about car jackings, burglary,rapes and heaps of murders. Not sure if it is racially motivated. Is it?
I am not sure if it is that simplistic. She may be meaning the reality, the common violence (not the apartheid violence) on the streets now which ‘probably’ did not exist previously. I do not know. Would be interesting to hear factual views of the situation there now of any South African readers. It is difficult for people to express honest views if they are then defined/characterised/judged by others as being racist.
No I don’t think Irene Van Dyk is some kind of Paul Holmes or John Ansell. She seems to be a pleasant person. I don’t think she’s nasty or overtly racist; but the idea that South Africa has gone to the pack since Mandela was released is a racist trope that is often recycled by white South Africans.
South Africa certainly hasn’t gone to the pack since Mandela was released, but the ANC is far more ruthlessly market-oriented that the old white Nationalist Party was. The transition in South Africa is interesting in a horrible kind of way because the ruling class managed successfully (and it was an impressive achievement) to de-couple apartheid and capitalism, with the former being abolished and the latter being strengthened at the same time.
I always ask a South African when they left the country.
Many seemed happy to stay under apartheid, but left when the whites lost political ascendancy.
Of course, as Naomi Klein and others have highlighted, the white establishment maintained its economic stranglehold over the country.
Okay, have it your way. In Te Ao Te Reo, white South African “exiles” never reflexively parrot racist tropes, just as your good self has never reflexively parroted black propaganda—-that means lies, by the way, not propaganda by black people—-against journalists and truth-tellers.
But as you’ve heard these rants many times, you’ll have no problem backing up your claim, eh.
I heard her interviewed several times by Murray (AKA “Deaks”, AKA “The Screaming Skull”, AKA The Most Dismal Sports Commentator Ever) Deaker and she almost always talked about how dangerous South Africa had become.
As I say, back it up. I’m sure a quick search will find copies of those interviews. Otherwise you are just attributing to an individual a trope you believe applies to all white South Africans. That’s kinda like racism, eh?
btw, I have a good friend who is in his mid fifties and who left SA a few years ago and who says the place is definitely more dangerous post apartheid. Is he racist, too? He’ll be surprised to hear it, being the lovely, liberal and man that he is.
As an aside, while SA is still astonishingly dangerous, the violent crime rate is actually dropping. Not by enough, but dropping all the same. I have a sneaking suspicion that it always was violent, but prior to the democratic changes only crimes against the dominant community were recorded in any detail, making the joint seem a lot safer than it really was.
I’ll be sure to let him know you think he’s a racist, Moz. As someone with a south Asian family heritage and classified as ‘Indian’ under apartheid, he knows a thing or two about the matter.
Some of the stupidest, most racist comments you’ll hear in this country are made by the likes of Willy Jackson, Tau Henare and Winston Peters. They should know a thing or two about racism as well, but it doesn’t stop them saying the most incendiary things.
So if your friend is saying that South Africa becoming a democratic state is a bad thing, then his ethnicity should not immunize him against criticism, surely?
Already putting the spokesperson for the Hospitality industry under pressure.
Simon Mercep doing the Panel a lot better than Mora by simply letting the Panel talk.
Jesus Murray Rawshark, I wished I had seen that Scoop article in November 2005.
Be assured the surveillance of ordinary NZers has been occurring on and off for decades, and it didn’t just apply to Maori activists. Neither was it just the SIS. The police were also up to their eyeballs in clandestine political surveillance.
I still don’t know whether it was the SIS or the police who targeted me in the late 70s/80s and early 90s. Some of the incidents were witnessed by others and a former boss of mine was known to be a SIS informant. With the benefit of hindsight I have long since realised that… as a public servant who was also active in the Labour Party, I was a sitting target. There was also a political associate (a woman) who went to extraordinary lengths to befriend me and who – years later – I discovered had been ‘informing’ on me.
I spent years trying to get to the bottom of it all, but came up against a brick wall every time. But along the way, I learnt a lot about the NZ establishment and how it sometimes operated. Not a pretty sight!
Edit: I don’t believe successive Labour leaders – up to and possibly including Helen Clark – had any knowledge of these particular spying activities. It would have been going on behind their backs.
Back in the 1960s/70s and at least part of the 80s, I think it was, in the main, a police unit of right wing thugs – the sort who find themselves with a bit of power and it goes to their heads. We’ve seen quite a few public instances of their conduct over the years, the most prominent being police brutality during the Springbok tour protests in the mid 1970s and early 80s. However there have been many documented examples of politicians and ordinary individuals having also been targeted for highly spurious reasons – the most famous being Colin Moyle.
Who would have benefited from it?
The various National governments of the day starting with Keith Holyoake followed by Marshall and eventually Muldoon – especially Muldoon.
What was the cultural imperative for it?
In a nut-shell it was obsessive Cold War paranoia on the part of Western establishments around the world. NZ was not immune from the condition. It meant that anyone to the left of Genghis Khan (slight exaggeration) was suspected of being a Communist subversive. There is no question the police (and no doubt the SIS) had infiltrators inside the Labour Party and that probably included the particular electorate to which I was attached. I was far from the only Labour activist who reported strange ‘going ons’ throughout that time. In my case there was an added consideration (too complex to explain here) that meant I was targeted – and my father before me – in an even more insidious way.
It still occurs of course but in more subtle ways. I think lprent’s niece, Rocky is a good example in more recent times.
There was a poaka intelligence unit set up in the late 70s to keep an eye on potential threats. I met a couple of them who worked openly, but there were plenty who worked secretly as well. They targeted groups including outlaw biker clubs, Mongrel Mob and Black Power, Polynesian youth groups, and hippies on Coromandel communes, that I know of.
Former Guantanamo chief prosecutor writes about torture.
The bigger question will be what now? The U.S. led the effort to enact the Convention Against Torture (CAT), a treaty that has been ratified by nearly every country in the world, including the United States. When President Ronald Reagan sent the CAT to the Senate for ratification in 1988 he said it clearly expressed “United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice,” and noted that it “required (a signatory) either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.” The CAT also requires us to provide alleged victims of torture a legal avenue to pursue compensation.
As Brexit comes to a grisly conclusion (perhaps) people on all sides are saying intemperate and uwise things. Some, like the Daly Mail, have been doing it for years.People as normally level headed as Jon Lansman are calling for automatic deselection of MPs who vote against a (likely) Labour three ...
I've got one source saying more Labour MPs than expected are mulling whether to vote for the deal - including names who were not on the letter to Juncker and Tusk— Emilio Casalicchio (@e_casalicchio) 17 October 2019 I've compiled a list of possible reasons why Labour ...
On Wednesday, the government was loudly telling us that it needed to legislate to allow it to impose "control orders" - effectively a parole regime, but imposed without charge, prosecution, conviction or real evidence - on suspected terrorists because they couldn't be prosecuted for their supposed crimes. Today, it turns ...
On Monday, the Hit and Run inquiry heard from NZDF's former director of special operations, who claimed that the defence Minister knew everything about the Operation Burnham raid. Today, the inquiry heard from that (former) Minister - and it turns out that he didn't know nearly as much as NZDF ...
Yoga gurus and cult leaders – I’ve seen a few. Two weeks ago, I unknowingly joined an alleged new-age cult at the Kāpiti coast, together with a giant kraken and some neatly dressed pensioners who would make any book club proud.They were among the two hundred people of all ages ...
The last decade has seen a trend of increasing weapons availability to police. Assault rifles. Tasers on every hip. Guns in cars. And following the march 15 massacre, pistols on every hip, all over the country. At the same time, its also seen an increase in the abuse of force: ...
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been busy preparing for our summer paper on Science Communication. Looking for something amusing about ‘risk’ in science, I came across this neat xkcd.com cartoon about why so many people come knocking on my door (or phoning me, or emailing me) desperately wanting ...
by John Edmundson The International Socialist Organisation (ISO) have recently reposted a February article, by Romany Tasker-Poland, explaining ISO’s position in the “trans rights” debate. It is available on their website and on their Facebook Page. The article sets out to explain why “socialists support trans rights”. It reads more ...
"Auckland City Mission: 10% of Kiwis experiencing food insecurity", RNZ, 16 October 2019:About half a million people are experiencing food insecurity, according to new research from the Auckland City Mission. Food insecurity, or food poverty, is defined as not having enough appropriate food. The City Mission said over the last ...
Media Statement for Immediate Release 16th October 2019 “Fake News” from Auckland City Council CCOs Board Chairs re pay and performance bonuses for top managers Despite comments from Auckland City Council CCOs Board Chairs re pay and performance bonuses for top managers—Herald Newspaper Tuesday Oct 15th–there is very little evidence ...
Would You Buy A Used Propaganda Video From This Man? Bridges and the National Party’s strategists have discovered that the ideas and attitudes considered acceptable by today’s editors and journalists are no longer enforceable. The rise and rise of the Internet and the social media platforms it spawned means that ...
There is plenty of evidence of the way the business mentality has permeated every level of society since the recrudescence of market liberalism 35 years ago. You only need to think of how citizens in need of help from their government, their state, their country, are now routinely described as ...
John MacCormickOver the last 40 years, New Zealanders – and people in other countries – have experienced big changes in the jobs they do and where they live and work. These changes include: a decline in manufacturing jobs an increase in jobs in ‘information-intensive’ industries (which are better paid ...
Nick Wilson, Leah Grout, Mereana Wilson, Anja Mizdrak, Phil Shoemack, Michael BakerProtecting waterways has the benefits of: (1) protecting water from hazardous microbes; (2) minimising cancer risk and other problems from nitrates in water; (3) avoiding algal blooms that are hazardous to health; (4) protecting mahinga kai uses (cultural ...
by The Council of Disobedient Women In a press release today Massey University announced it has decided to rebrand and reorientate after struggling to be a University for grown-ups. For some time the University has wanted to be a safe play space for wee-woke-misogynists who have been really badly triggered ...
After a brief dalliance with 'hard Revoke' it looks like the Lib Dems are changing ground on on Brexit, with leader Jo Swinson reverting to calling for a second referendum on Johnson's deal.The party has tabled an amendment to the Queen’s speech requesting that any deal brought back from Brussels ...
The government has decided that someone has done Something Bad. But despite their belief, there seems to be no evidence that they have actually broken the law. So the government's solution is to pass a retrospective law allowing them to be punished anyway, on a lower standard of proof. If ...
So, Judith Collins has done a Facebook rant about climate change, peddling the same shit National has been shovelling for the past twenty years: the impacts are overstated, there's no need to do anything about it, and its too hard anyway (oh, and its so unfair that people who peddle ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzThere is a lot of discussion on the benefits of ...
I came across this song quite by accident. If it isn't one of Greta Thunberg's favourites - it should be.Video courtesy of YouTube.This post is exclusive to Bowalley Road. ...
Last month, NZDF's shoddy coverup of what it knew about civilian casualties in Operation Burnham began to fall apart, with the revelation that a report on the matter, which NZDF claimed not to have, had been sitting in an NZDF safe for the past nine years. Yesterday, the man responsible ...
While many imagine that countries like the USA and Europe dominate space activities, in fact India is now a major player on this stage. It launches satellites for its own purposes and also commercially, and has constellations orbiting our planet and returning data of vital importance to that nation in ...
Thanks to a report from the Acting Inspector General of Intelligence and Security following a complaint by Nicky Hager, we have come to find out that the SIS illegally spied on Mr. Hager on behalf of the NZDF after publication of Hager’s 2011 book, Other People’s Wars. The NZDF justified ...
COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING MYTH 1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate. FACT: The HadCRUT3 surface temperature index, produced by the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office and the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, shows warming to 1878, cooling to 1911, ...
For the past week, Extinction Rebellion has been peacefully protesting in London to demand action on climate change. The British government's response? Ban their protests:Police have banned Extinction Rebellion protests from continuing anywhere in London, as they moved in almost without warning to clear protesters who remained at the movement’s ...
An essay by Judith Collins MP reported on Carbon News yesterday seems to show an alarming shift in attitude within the National Party. Collins argues against the Zero Carbon Bill, the Paris Agreement, and downplays the magnitude of climate impacts. The Paris Agreement was adopted in December 2015 and ratified ...
When they were running for election, Labour promised to overhaul the Employment Relations Act and introduce fair pay agreements to set basic pay and conditions on an industry level, preventing bad employers from undercutting good ones. They followed this up by establishing a working group, which reported back in January ...
A list of indicators of bad science – many of these are found in articles promoted by anti-fluoride activists. Anti-fluoride activists have been pouring money into a scaremongering campaign warning pregnant women not to drink fluoridated water. They claim fluoride will lower the IQ of their future child. Fluoride ...
Nothing Left To Say: Labour's pollster, Stephen Mills, remains swaddled-up in the comforting myths of the 1980s. As if the experience of Roger Douglas’s genuinely radical post-Muldoon policy agenda was literally a once-in-a-lifetime thing – as much as the party could possibly absorb for at least the next 50 years.MEMO ...
The Royal Commission on abuse in care is very significant for the disability community. For many decades last century, thousands of disabled children, and adults who managed to survive, were locked away from families and communities. This was not for anything they had done, but for the perceived threat their ...
With an unfair voting system, uneven electorates and an un-elected upper house, the UK's "democracy" is barely worthy of the name. But now the government wants to make it worse:The government has been accused of suppressing voters’ rights with the potential disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of people after plans ...
Back in the 90's and early 2000's, the building industry was building leaky homes which should never have been granted consent. Now it turns out they've been building dodgy office blocks as well:New imaging technology has revealed hundreds of major buildings nationwide have defective or missing concrete or reinforcing steel. ...
Local body election results were released over the weekend, to joy or despair depending on where you live. In Auckland, Phil Goff trounced John Tamihere, who is muttering darkly about running for Parliament again (but which party would want him?) Wellington is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Weta Workshop, except ...
How could government evolve over the next decades? Reports of democracy’s imminent demise are greatly exaggerated. However, satisfaction with political systems in many countries is low, so there is much to do for governments of all political stripes to improve relevance and trust. Digital technologies are seen as one ...
Two years have now gone by since the Friday afternoon when my university-student son and I headed out of our Barcelona flat to a nearby primary school, designated as a polling station for the vote that was to be held the following Sunday: the referendum on Catalonia’s independence from Spain ...
Overruled: The joint decision of Finance Minister, Grant Robertson (Labour) and his Associate Minister, David Parker (Labour) arguably the two most powerful ministers in Jacinda Ardern’s government, to grant OceanaGold the consents which Land Information Minister, Eugenie Sage (Greens) had earlier denied them, offers bitter proof of how hard fighting ...
More than double the number of people who will vote in this year’s local body elections have tried marijuana or urinated somewhere they shouldn’t have. As local elections look set for the lowest turnout in decades, with many regions falling well short of 40%, the Government is exploring a number ...
A Statement on Abortion Law Reform by the Council of Disobedient Women On the eve of bringing an end to antiquated, anti-women abortion laws Green MP Jan Logie intends to write women out of the Bill. With a stroke of the pen, the woke are aiming for total erasure ...
Musings continue apace about “the experienced businessman!” soon to be taking up a National Party MP position. Or to be more accurate, being parachuted into a seat to shut down their former MP Jamie-Lee Ross, who despite his own shortcomings shed at least some more light on the inner workings ...
The Ugandan government wants to murder gay people:Uganda has announced plans to impose the death penalty on homosexuals. The bill, colloquially known as “Kill the Gays” in Uganda, was nullified five years ago on a technicality, but the government said on Thursday it plans to resurrect it within weeks. The ...
Freedom Of Speech? The Säuberung (cleansing by fire) was the work of the German Student Union which, on 10 May 1933, under the watchful eye of the Nazi Reichminister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, consigned 25,000 books to the flames in a ritual exorcism of “un-German thought”. According to the logic of the ...
“There can be no such thing as kaupapa Māori political parties or politics in Aotearoa” (Willie Jackson, Labour Party (2017). Māori TV, General/List Election Special) I begin with that claim because at the time, I was confounded at first that it fell out of Willie Jackson’s mouth, and then ...
New Zealand has prided itself for decades with regard to its lack of pollution, and all will be aware that the ‘100% Pure New Zealand‘ meme is under threat through land, water and air pollution of various causes. There is another type of contamination that the country also faces: light ...
New Zealand’s media is doing its part in Japan, reassuring those in the path of the storm that they won’t miss any rugby while away from their flooded homes. New Zealand sports reporters stationed in Japan for the Rugby World Cup have had the rare and heartwarming opportunity to inform ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones is the only Cabinet member in favour of putting it all on green. As Finance Minister Grant Robertson finds himself with an enormous $7.5 billion surplus, the Government has begun intense, at times contentious conversations about whether to put the money on red or black at ...
by Susanne Kemp At the start of September close to 100,000 school teachers went on strike in Jordan. They demanded a 50% pay rise. A pay rise actually agreed to by the regime back in 2014. In early October, however, in the face of government repression and threats, the teachers’ ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzWhy do people still think climate change isn’t real?David ...
Back in 2011, journalist Nicky Hager published Other People's Wars, an expose on NZDF's activities over the previous decade of the "war on terror". NZDF didn't like this, and especially didn't like the fact that it was base don leaks from their own. So, they had the SIS investigate him ...
The Zero Carbon Bill is due back from select committee in two weeks, and will likely pass its final stages in November. So naturally, farmers are planning a hate-march against it. But they're not just demanding lower methane targets so they can keep on destroying the planet; they're also demanding ...
Last year, California burned. This year, to stop it happening again (or rather, to stop themselves from being found liable if it happens again), Pacific Gas and Electric is cutting power to half the state for a week:Schools are closed. Traffic lights down. Tunnels dark. Businesses unopened. Hospitals running on ...
The Best Way: Missing from the on-line voting debate is any reference to the voting system that produces turn-out figures ranging from 77 to 93 percent of registered voters. The voting system used to collect and count the votes cast in our parliamentary elections. The system that involves citizens making ...
Among the great new bunch of political friends we have been making recently is the excellent Australian-based Marxist gender-critical site, Freer Lives. So we asked the comrade who set up that blog to write something for Redline on the blog, himself, his analysis of the rise of gender politics and ...
by Don Franks The Auckland City Mission is struggling with a 40 percent increase in demand for food parcels this year. A total of 23,020 were needed by June. Last month Missioner Chris Farrelly told the Herald the “cupboards are bare” and without an emergency food drive, he can’t see ...
by The Council of Disobedient Women Massey Wellington Student Association had a sit-in today. Imagine a sit-in. On a campus. Against a women’s rights meeting. Did the ’60s really happen or did we fucking dream it? They gathered in the student square, an echo chamber. Sitting on soft pillows ...
For some reasons, my post about the mystery message from inside the Downing Street bunker seemed to catch people's attention. Quite a lot of hits from NZ (unsurprisingly) and the USA (a bit more puzzlingly, but hi there, USAians!!) and 76 views from the Ukraine.I've celebrated my Ukrainian readers in ...
First, almost a score of Labour MPs seem to have sent a letter to the EU basically begging them to accept a deal - any deal - just so Britain can get the Heck on with Brexiting instead of being trapped in limbo:
by Phil Duncan In 2016 the National-led government suspended the Parent Visa Category, through which migrants were able to bring their parents into New Zealand. Since then over 5,700 people have been in immigration limbo, stuck on the visa wait list. Labour is now bringing back the scheme. Well, sort ...
The following was released yesterday (Tues, October 8) by the women’s liberation organisation Speak Up for Women. On 23 September Speak Up For Women announced that we would be holding an event at the Massey University Theaterette in Wellington. The event is called Feminism 2020. The intention of the event ...
The government is currently consulting on plans to improve freshwater quality. So naturally, farmers oppose it:South Taranaki farmers are preparing to fight proposed national freshwater changes that some fear will bankrupt them. The Government's proposed National Environment Standard on Freshwater Management, released in September, rated the Waingongoro River as one ...
Yesterday was the last day for (reliably) posting your vote away in local body elections. Turnouts are mostly much lower than the equivalent time last year (Palmerston North is down 2.3%), and so naturally people are pushing their online-voting snake oil again. Because the online census worked so well, lets ...
This essay, on the political legacy of the eugenics movement, by Kenan Malik was originally published in the Observer on 6 October 2019, under the headline ‘The spirit of eugenics is still with us, as immigrants know to their cost’. Birth control. Intelligence tests. Town planning. Immigration controls. It’s striking how ...
Another year, and the government has announced another enormous government "surplus". And just like last year, its nothing of the sort. When we have people homeless and sick and hungry, when we have schools and hospitals still falling down, when we have underpaid public servants and infrastucture unmaintained or unbuilt, ...
James Forsyth at The Spectator (I know, I know) has tapped one of his contacts inside Number Ten for an insight into the Johnson administration's thinking and strategy.It is fascinating, unsettling and quite, quite mad. Some key points:Negotiations have stalled and the Johnson administration are keen to blame the EU: ...
Fatal Contact: With the arrival of captain James Cook in October 1769, the islands of what would become New Zealand ceased to be the preserve of Polynesian navigators and settlers and became a part of both the world’s map and the world’s history.THE MAORI NATIONALIST assault upon the historical meaning ...
Another round of tactical talks about forming a Government of National Unity have come to nothing with the Liberal Democrats still refusing countenance putting Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street:Opposition talks on Monday made little headway over when to try and vote down Boris Johnson's government and who might succeed him as ...
by Nick Rogers The debate around the meaning of sex and gender made an appearance at this year’s British Labour Party conference in Brighton. Women’s Place UK – an organisation that questions the demand that biological males who self-identify as woman should have access to women’s spaces, to all-women shortlists, ...
Yesterday I went down to Wellington to participate in the Extinction Rebellion protest. Its part of the latest global wave of XR actions, with actions happening all over the world. Some of those protests are massively disruptive: in Canada, XR is blocking major bridges, stopping people from getting to work. ...
The Workshop is a charitable trust for public good. The Workshop undertake research to find ways of communicating that will build support for the solutions that work to solve complex social and environmental problems. See their Report on Talking about Poverty and Welfare Reform below. ...
What is language? We generally assume that it a facility unique to humans, allowing us to share what’s in and on our minds. We can tell of our plans, our past exploits, our knowledge. It also allows us to lie. And yet there are vast numbers of people we can’t ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is predicting a hard Brexit for the United Kingdom, as he believes British Prime Minister Boris Johnson won’t be able to negotiate terms before the October 30 deadline. The Minister, who was one of the first to publicly come out and predict British voters would leave ...
Speaking at the Council of Trade Unions' (CTU) biennial conference, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters told unionists that any future attacks on the Government won't work. "Now, we are being attacked by the union movement in this country. You can have your views but I'm here to say standing ...
We want every New Zealander to be happy, safe, and healthy. To do this, we need to support strong, safe communities, and a robust and efficient health system. ...
Defence Minister Ron Mark has used his powers to overrule a noise complaint ruling against Whenuapai airbase on the grounds of "national security". The Environment Court last month released a ruling in favour of a private developer, declaring the Auckland airbase had to comply with noise restrictions when it performs ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has opened fire against "unreconstructed morons" after NZ First MP Shane Jones was photographed on holiday holding an AR-15 rifle. Mr Peters is defending Mr Jones, telling Magic Talk host Peter Williams that his MP was just having fun "like most people do". "The ...
New Zealand First Deputy Leader and Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau was in attendance during the morning blessing of the Rotorua Lakefront development project. Around 60 people gathered on the shores of Lake Rotorua, including city mayor Steve Chadwick and deputy Dave Donaldson. The Lakefront development is a ...
Forestry Minister Shane Jones is considering reining in on conversions of farmland to forestry, and also issued a warning to foreign-owned forestry companies that make up nearly 75 per cent of the industry. He said too many foreign companies had not provided enough access for domestic processors to get timber. ...
Speaking to Radio NZ, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said the tightening of the parental category visa is a direct result of the Party’s coalition negotiations with the Labour Party. He said the new changes switch the financial onus from the parent moving to New Zealand to the child ...
The Coalition Government is set to cut red tape in the building and construction sector in an effort to allow more houses to be built, including prefabricated houses. The changes will enable the mass factory production of "high quality" buildings, slash the likely number of building inspections for factory produced ...
Since coming into Government, we’ve worked hard to tackle homelessness and make sure everyone has a warm, dry home. And today, on World Homeless Day, we want to report back and update you on our progress so far. ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has hit back at National Party leader Simon Bridges who criticized the Coalition Government’s approach to crime, and said that the latter isn't credible in his attack on the Government over gang recruitment. "We've got as massive drug problem in this country. It is ...
New Zealand Mānuka honey exporters have welcomed an initiative by the Coalition Government to help secure the term “mānuka honey” to be used exclusively by Kiwi exporters, ensuring that our multimillion-dollar industry is protected. Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones had recently announced that a Provincial Growth Funding of $5.7 ...
Political commentator Mike Hosking has labelled New Zealand First leader Winston Peters as “the voice of reason in a government soft on drugs”, for the Party’s stance on drug testing at music festivals. “If common sense is worth a vote, Winston Peters is quids in,” Mr Hosking said. The Labour ...
Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau has announced Provincial Growth Funding to ensure work opportunities in Turangi and Whanganui, through its skills and employment programme, Te Ara Mahi. A fund of $500,000 will go to Rafting NZ in Turangi for a 16-week river guide training course to train ...
Treasury has shown that the Coalition Government has a $7.5 billion surplus, which is $4 billion higher than what was expected in the 2019 Budget unveiled last May. It is also $2 billion higher than the actual surplus unveiled this time last year, and at a size that has not ...
Official Information Act figures released to NZME show there were 350 assaults on officers in the year to the end of June, 79 more than the year before. The increase in attacks have sparked calls for more legal protection for first responders to be enacted. The assaults included officers being ...
“Nobody wants to see babies uplifted”, this was the pronouncement of Minister for Children Hon. Tracey Martin as her department, Oranga Tamariki, faces multiple inquiries into the number of babies being taken from their families. “But a baby can die with a single punch, “the Minister continued. “So sometimes, Oranga ...
We're making progress on tackling the long-term challenges: from homelessness, to strengthening border security, to bringing banking back New Zealand's small towns. ...
Associate Transport Minister Shane Jones has backed the ambitious plan to move Auckland’s port to Northport, at Whangarei harbour, which he says will be the “King Kong of infrastructure”. The plan is part of the recommendations of a six-person independent working group, which has recommended the Ports of Auckland be ...
A six-member independent working group selected the option of moving Auckland’s port to Northport, in Whangarei, ahead of other options. In what could be New Zealand’s most ambitious infrastructure project yet, a major expansion of the Marsden Point port could happen within 15 years. The project, officially called the “Upper ...
The final Electricity Price Review recommended prohibiting prompt payment discounts but allowing “reasonable” late fees. The findings of this review was welcomed by the Coalition Government, but they hope companies will follow through with its recommendations without regulations needed to be passed. Meridian Energy had already stopped prompt payment discounts, ...
Fletcher Tabuteau, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF)through its skills and employment programme, Te Ara Mahi,will invest nearly $600,000 to ensure work opportunities for locals in Turangia and Whanganui, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced today. “I’m pleased to announce the PGF ...
An export-led economy is one of New Zealand First’s key principles, and our commitment to achieving this is shown by the continuing skyrocketing demand for our beef and sheep meat exports. Beef + Lamb New Zealand's New Season Outlook 2019-20 report forecasts beef, lamb and mutton prices to lift from ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today in Gisborne an investment of $17.27m into bringing “world-leading” food-growing technology and the creation of more than 100 new jobs in the East Coast city. The funding comes from the Provincial Growth Fund, and included a $15 million loan to LeaderBrand, a ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development More than 100 people in Tairāwhiti’s Tolaga Bay will benefit from two employment initiatives supported by the Provincial Growth Fund, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones and Employment Minister Willie Jackson announced today. “Tolaga Bay is an incredibly tight-knit community, but one in ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is supporting Gisborne business Leaderbrand to produce salad vegetables year round and create more jobs in the Tairāwhiti region, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “Our support for Leaderbrand will help them build large greenhouses ...
“Nobody wants to see babies uplifted”, this was the pronouncement of Minister for Children Hon. Tracey Martin as her department, Oranga Tamariki, faces multiple inquiries into the number of babies being taken from their families. “But a baby can die with a single punch, “the Minister continued. “So sometimes, Oranga ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has praised the promise by New Zealand’s biggest banks not to close any provincial branches while the Coalition Government trials regional banking hubs across the country. The Minister said the announce was the “first sign of hope for regional communities”, many of which have ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, New Zealand First Leader New Zealand First is proud to have delivered an upgrade of the SuperGold Card website and a new smartphone app, which will help unlock the full benefits of the SuperGold Card for 750,000 New Zealand seniors.Party Leader Rt Hon Winston Peters, ...
Delivering a key election campaign promise, New Zealand First is proud to have accomplished a long overdue upgrade of the SuperGold Card today. At an event in Auckland, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters joined Minister for Seniors Hon. Tracey Martin in unveiling the new website and smartphone app which ...
The Government today announced its support for a project that could substantially reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions from cattle. The announcement was made as part of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s and Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor’s visit to Nelson’s Cawthron Aquaculture Park. The Cawthron Institute will receive $100,000 from the Government’s ...
Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni has welcomed the first reading of the New Zealand Superannuation and Veteran’s Pension Legislation Amendment Bill. “Every New Zealander has a stake in New Zealand Superannuation and Veteran’s Pension,” says Carmel Sepuloni. “They are our most common form of social assistance – nearly 800,000 New ...
Babies in Auckland aged six months and over can receive a free vaccination and children will all have access to vaccines, Associate Minister of Health Julie Anne Genter announced today at Papatoetoe High School. The move comes as part of Government efforts to step up the fight against measles. ...
***Check against delivery*** Good morning. It is a pleasure to be here, and to have the honour of opening this important conference on behalf of the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. Let us take the opportunity to acknowledge all the people who have helped make today possible, including our special ...
Police Minister Stuart Nash says the safety of frontline officers and members of the public will be the focus of a new trial of specialist Police response teams in three of our largest urban centres. Police have this morning released details of an initiative to be trialled in Counties Manukau, ...
The Minister of Fisheries is calling for entries for a new public award to celebrate innovation in our seafood sector. “I have established the Seafood Sustainability Awards to recognise and celebrate those throughout industry, tangata whenua and communities who demonstrate outstanding dedication and innovation towards the sustainability of New Zealand’s ...
Minister for Women Julie Anne Genter welcomes leaders in the private sector taking action on closing their gender pay gaps to ensure a fairer workplace for all New Zealanders. Ms Genter today launched a new report, Addressing the gender pay gap and driving women’s representation in senior leadership, from the Champions for ...
Government Ministers today welcomed the release of a marine environment report highlighting the four key issues affecting our oceans, estuaries and coastlines. The release underlines the importance of government proposals to combat climate pollution, ensure clean freshwater, protect biodiversity, make land use more sustainable, and reduce waste and plastic. Environment ...
The Government has approved funding for a new acute mental health facility for Waikato which will provide better care and support to people with mental health and addiction issues. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Health Minister Dr David Clark announced the $100 million project to replace the aging Henry Rongomau ...
The Government is making progress on its goal to integrate te reo Māori into education by 2025, with over 500 teachers and support staff already graduating from Te Ahu o te Reo Māori, Associate Education Minister Kelvin Davis announced today. Kelvin Davis made the announcement at an awards ceremony in Waikanae today, for ...
Statistics Minister James Shaw has welcomed the first release of 2018 Census data. The first release of data today, 23 September, includes key data on population, regional growth, the number of homes and the size of different ethnic groups in New Zealand. Data from the 2018 Census will support the ...
Minister for Statistics James Shaw today announced a public consultation on a proposed algorithm charter for government agencies. The charter has been developed by the Government Chief Data Steward in response to growing calls for more transparency in government use of data. Computer algorithms – procedures or formulas for solving ...
Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor, Climate Change Minister James Shaw and visiting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte co-hosted a business roundtable in Auckland this morning focused on working together to address climate change. “The Netherlands is an important partner for New Zealand. We share a strong agricultural history. Sustainable agribusiness and ...
The Government is taking action to build an inclusive economy where more of us receive our fair share at work and businesses can compete on great products and services, not undercutting wages and conditions, Immigration and Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says. Two consultations launched today seek feedback ...
The future for New Zealand’s threatened indigenous freshwater fish looks brighter with the passing of the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill in Parliament today said Minister of Conservation, Eugenie Sage. “Until now, our freshwater fish legislation has been 20 years out of date. We have lacked effective tools to ...
At 1.30pm tomorrow, hundreds of thousands of Kiwis will join about 65 million people around the globe in ShakeOut, the world’s biggest earthquake drill. The annual drill is to remind people of the right action to take during an earthquake which is to Drop, Cover, Hold, and to practise their ...
Kiwis are benefiting from higher wage growth and low inflation under the Coalition Government. Stats NZ data out today shows the rise in the cost of living remains low, as annual Consumers Price Index (CPI) inflation fell to 1.5% in September from 1.7% in June. “The low inflation comes as ...
New Zealand’s economic strength and resilience has been recognised in a major update on the state of the global economy. The IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook released overnight shows a reduced global growth forecast over the next two years as issues like the US-China trade war and Brexit take hold. ...
Justice Minister Andrew Little has today introduced a new Bill to prevent terrorism and support the de-radicalisation of New Zealanders returning from overseas. The Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill gives the New Zealand Police the ability to apply to the High Court to impose control orders on New Zealanders who ...
A Bill that proposes targeted changes to simplify the processes for Māori land owners when engaging with the Māori Land Court has had its First Reading today. “The approach taken by the Government is to ensure that the protection of Māori land remains a priority as we seek to improve ...
Let me first thank all the new unionists and members in the room. There is nothing more important to improving people’s working lives than people making the decision to care, to get on board and help, to take up the reins and get involved. Congratulations to you. You bring the ...
Minister of Defence Ron Mark has signed a certificate exempting the activity of engine testing at Whenuapai Airbase from the Resource Management Act 1991. The Act gives the Minister of Defence the power to exempt activities for the purposes of national security. The certificate will mean the recent Environment Court ...
Finance Minister Grant Robertson has announced New Zealand will join the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action while attending APEC meetings in Chile. The objective of the 39 member Coalition is to share information and promote action to tackle climate change. It was formed in April this year, in ...
Feedback sought– Lyttelton commercial zone parking The Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration, Poto Williams, is seeking feedback on a proposal to remove on-site car parking requirements for new developments in the Lyttelton commercial zone. The proposal, by Christchurch City Council, asks that powers under section 71 of the Greater ...
Hon Minister Poto Williams Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration MEDIA STATEMENT Tuesday 15 October 2019 Feedback sought – Hagley Oval The Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration, Poto Williams, is seeking feedback on a proposal about Hagley Oval. The proposal was developed by Regenerate Christchurch ...
Ladies and gentlemen, NZCTU President Richard Wagstaff, members of respective unions – thank you for the invitation to speak to you today. This might be preaching to the choir, but the importance of trade unions in New Zealand’s historical arch is difficult to understate. And it is my belief that ...
"Let’s start by acknowledging that it has been a huge year. " Police Association Annual Conference James Cook Grand Chancellor Hotel Wellington Nau mai, haere mai. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, ka nui te mihi, ki a koutou katoa. President of the Police Association, Chris Cahill; Members of the Association and ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters and Minister of Defence Ron Mark have announced the New Zealand Government’s decision to again deploy a Royal New Zealand Air Force P-3K2 (P-3) maritime patrol aircraft to support the implementation of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions imposing sanctions against North Korea. New ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters says New Zealand continues to have serious concerns for peace and stability in north-east Syria. “Recent reports that hundreds of ISIS-affiliated families have fled from a camp are deeply concerning from a humanitarian and security perspective”, Mr Peters says. “While we acknowledge Turkey’s domestic security ...
Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor is warning travelling Kiwis to be vigilant as the high-season for the crop-eating brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB) is under way. “We’re on high alert to stop BMSB arriving in NZ. The high season runs until April 30 and we’ve strengthened our measures to stop stink ...
The Government is moving swiftly to change the law to improve the welfare and pastoral care of students living in university halls of residence and other tertiary hostels. Cabinet has agreed to several changes, including creating a new mandatory Code of Practice that sets out the duty of pastoral care ...
The Minister for Conservation Eugenie Sage has launched a new comprehensive trapping guide for community trappers to help them protect our native birds, plants and other wildlife, at Zealandia in Wellington today. ‘A practical guide to trapping’, has been developed by the Department of Conservation (DOC), and was launched during ...
Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter welcomes PHARMAC’s move to improve access to long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs). PHARMAC has today announced it will fund the full cost of Mirena and Jaydess for anyone seeking long term contraception, lifting previous restrictions on access to Mirena. “I welcome women having greater choices ...
The Government has approved the next stage of a major redevelopment of Taranaki Base Hospital, which will deliver new and improved facilities for patients. Health Minister Dr David Clark has announced details of a $300 million dollar project to build a new East Wing at the New Plymouth hospital. It ...
Extra funding will allow Rural Support Trusts to help farming families, says Minister for Rural Communities and Agriculture Damien O’Connor. “I know that rural families are worried about some of the challenges facing them, including the ongoing uncertainty created by the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak. “Those concerns sit alongside ongoing worries ...
Thank you for the opportunity to be here to present certificates to the 16 graduates who have completed a beekeeping course delivered by the Howard League. Let us start by acknowledging Auckland Prison’s Deputy Prison Director Tom Sherlock, and Acting Assistant Regional Commissioner of Corrections Northern Region Scott Walker - ...
Finance Minister Grant Robertson leaves this weekend to attend the APEC Finance Ministers meeting in Santiago, Chile. Discussions between APEC Finance Ministers at the meeting will include the effects of the current global economic uncertainty, risks for APEC economies and sustainable development of the region. While at APEC Grant Robertson ...
The Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio says for Pacific people, language can be a source of strength. It can help ground us and give us confidence. When we speak them, our languages provide us with an immediate and intimate access to our identity and our story - and ...
The Coalition Government has announced an action plan to improve the wellbeing of disabled New Zealanders by addressing inequalities in play, active recreation and sport. The initiative includes training to develop a workforce that understands the needs of children and young people with a range of impairments, advocacy for fit ...
The construction sector is being freed up to allow more homes to be built more quickly as the Government cuts through some of the red tape of the Building Act. “Every New Zealander deserves a warm, dry, safe home and old inefficiencies in the Building Act make building slow and ...
About a hundred disgruntled licensed gun owners have descended on the New Zealand First conference to tell the party leader Winston Peters that they feel like victims. ...
New Zealand First members will vote on a policy today that would allow businesses of all sizes to enforce 90-day trials when they employ people straight out of prison. ...
"Each time she held her lighter underneath the pipe and sucked the smoke into the back of her throat, the promise was there": a New Zealand tragedy by Alice Tawhai. ...
With the future of Mediaworks’ TV business hanging in the balance, Al Jazeera news presenter Kamahl Santamaria reflects on what the imperilled channel meant, and continues to mean, to him.I always liked the logo. The fresh bright colours, the nod to a koru in its shape, and just the fact ...
There are still many barriers preventing people from voting in local elections. Laura O’Connell Rapira proposes some social solutions.The Spinoff local election coverage is made possible thanks to The Spinoff Members. For more about becoming a member and supporting The Spinoff’s journalism click here.To vote in the local elections, I cast ...
What’s really stood out for me being back in Tokyo is the unique qualities of Japan’s spectators, writes Richard Light, professor of sport coaching at the University of Canterbury.The Rugby World Cup has thrown a global spotlight on Japan over recent weeks. Not just the rugby: the distinctive culture and ...
As the New Zealand First Party gathers for its annual conference, the question swirling in the year is how it can carve out a path to avoid electoral defeat in 2020, writes Jo Moir for RNZ. It’s not you, it’s me. It’s a familiar break up excuse that’s used ...
To the early intervention therapists, to the teachers, to the speech therapists, the occupational therapists, music therapists, diabetes nurses and all: you change the world.When I was married almost a decade ago we had the following reading at our wedding:You are holding up a ceilingwith both arms. It is very ...
The faces said it all. The smiles of the European leaders crowded round Boris after the Brexit deal was struck. The deal his opponents – no, pretty much everyone – said was impossible.So what’s in it? The detail is still opaque, but subject to gremlins in the fine print, ...
Iran attracts an onslaught of negative media in New Zealand and Western media. But is it fair or deserved? David Robie has spent several weeks travelling in the country on sabbatical and finds the media negativity far from the reality of the “most friendly” country he has ever visited ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra [embedded content]University of Canberra Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Leigh Sullivan discusses the week in politics with Michelle Grattan. They talk about Alan Jones accusing Prime Minister Scott Morrison of failing the immediate needs of drought-striken farmers, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anita Parbhakar-Fox, Senior Research Fellow in Geometallurgy/Applied Geochemistry, The University of Queensland Last month, scientists uncovered a mineral called Edscottite. Minerals are solid, naturally occurring substances that are not living, such as quartz or haematite. This new mineral was discovered after an ...
The Auckland-based collective talk origins, ambitions and making the rave accessible to everybody.Friendly Potential is an outfit that defies easy summary. They’re among the country’s most ambitious and prolific club promoters. In their almost five-years of operation, they’ve been responsible for the local debuts of electronic music icons including Detroit ...
Analysis: Two polls show support for Labour sliding, the government is accused of breaking another promise and the Greens's refusal to back a bill forces Labour to rely on National to get it through. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kiera Lindsey, University of Technology Sydney One spring morning in 1850, over 8,000 Sydneysiders marched through town to protest the resumption of transportation – the act of sending British criminals to Australia. It was the largest protest in Australia thus far, an ...
Two shareholders of failed insurance firm company CBL are leading a class action against the firm's former directors seeking compensation for financial losses. ...
Sam Brooks recaps the third episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, and wonders why some of these queens don’t know how to sew.This episode asks, and sort of answers the main question that millions of people across the world: why would you come on Drag Race and not know how to sew?!There ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John M Clarke, Team Leader, Regional Projections, CSIRO Last month we lost Dr Penny Whetton – one of the world’s most respected climate scientists and a brilliant mentor to the next generation of researchers. Penny will also be remembered as a passionate ...
Ten moose were upended into the Dusky Sounds in 1910. Now, their descendants are getting their day in the sun.The climate crisis is affecting wildlife all over the country: rockhopper penguin populations are in drastic decline, tuatara eggs aren’t hatching females, and the ice walls keeping predators away from kea ...
Security footage of NZ First MP Clayton Mitchell being thrown out of a Tauranga bar looks unlikely to ever be aired - despite his leader Winston Peters promising a screening. ...
Amnesty International is concerned that Justice Minister Andrew Little's Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill could have the potential to undermine human rights in New Zealand. The Bill would give the New Zealand Police the ability to apply to ...
Expect the old campaigner Winston Peters to be at his belligerent best as he gears up for another election. He’s kept his party alive for 27 years and he shows no sign of quitting. The omens may be bleak—polls this week showed his party below the 5% threshold– but Peters ...
The National Party has agreed to take down any videos breaching the current rules around the use of parliamentary TV footage, as all parties try to reach consensus. ...
Recently the Health Promotion Agency released a report into hazardous drinking in New Zealand. The report shows that Māori who drink alcohol and live in deprived circumstances are less likely to have a harmful relationship with alcohol if they ...
Turkey-US joint-statement on military ops within Syria’s territory.The Turkish Embassy in New Zealand issued Evening Report this unabridged United States of America-Republic of Turkey joint-statement detailing what both sides agreed to regarding Turkey’s military operations within the so-called security zone within Syrian territory near Turkey’s southern border. It is ...
Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash didn’t mention what winners will receive, when he proudly called for entries for a new public award “to celebrate innovation in our seafood sector”. Nor did he mention the cost to taxpayers of this initiative. Point of Order’s checks with the website where more details have ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fiona R Martin, Senior Lecturer in Convergent and Online Media, University of Sydney One of the basic tenets of the ABC Act is independence from government. Yet once again, in contravention to that principle, the federal government is trying to push through ...
A new poem by Auckland poet Lily Holloway.modernity to globalisationwhen I get there as still life and landscape and also portraitureseeking the cacti in small pots who dot the globeslices of pie offer up the vision after the sermonexpressing emotions without coherent narrative supportbecause no artist responded to this callemploying ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is calling on Broadcasting Minister Kris Faafoi to rule out any taxpayer-funded purchase or bailout for Mediaworks’s channel Three. Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says, “For the last few months Mediaworks ...
The Police Commissioner's announcement that squadcars of officers with automatic rifles will patrol New Zealand's streets is dangerous and unnecessary, according to the criminal justice community organisation People Against Prisons Aotearoa. The ...
News broke this morning that Mediaworks is seeking to sell off, and even contemplating closing, its TV division. What might that mean for journalism?For journalism in New Zealand, the loss of Three’s TV division is a devastating blow. It is not yet known whether any of the news properties will ...
In our defence of our coalition Government policy on climate change, we fully support Government plan to use rail funding for rail infrastructure upgrades to promote use rail infrastructure for freight around NZ. ...
The billions of tonnes of plastic in our oceans isn’t going away any time soon, but innovative companies here and abroad are working together to find silver linings to this daunting problem.Fishing boats head out to sea and set their nets. They go back to shore. They head back out, ...
An EveningReport.nz investigation by Kevin ListKiwibank services. Image by Kevin List.Evening Report looks into the separation of Kiwibank from New Zealand Post, and considers the impact on the public’s access to banking services in their communities.Kiwibank. What’s going on? Kiwibank and New Zealand Post are in the ...
Local Government New Zealand today confirmed what many local election commentators have observed; that more of the voting public cast their ballots in favour of women candidates than ever before. ...
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 (this week we totted up the data a day early, on Wednesday, to let our books ed. ...
New Zealand's mineral manufacturing sector is expected to face some testing times, with softer prices, tighter margins and sluggish export markets. ...
Portugal has been painted by pro-cannabis legalisation groups as a model to follow. Yet just last month, the mayor of Porto contradicted his previous pro-harm reduction position and endorsed reintroducing criminal penalties for drug use in public spaces. ...
Chief of Defence Force Air Marshal Kevin Short announced today the inclusion of six Cook Island First World War soldiers in the New Zealand and Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s official rolls of honour. ...
The latest statistics released by the Health Promotion Agency showing a dramatic fall in the numbers of cigarettes being sold in supermarkets, service stations, and liquor stores are being welcomed by the Vaping Trade Association of New Zealand (VTANZ). ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s content by Dr Bryce Edwards.NZ First Thomas Coughlan (Stuff): Where to from here? How NZ First will win in ...
Aotearoa Climate Emergency (ACE), a climate change network, will host a conference in Wellington on 11 November (Armistice Day) to promote holding a Citizens Assembly in 2020, as a way of breaking the current political deadlock on treating climate ...
MediaWorks’ owners have called time after years of losses from its TV division. Sources say the company will announce it is for sale – if no buyers emerge, it will close within months.Three is facing the biggest crisis in its three decade history today, as its ownership will soon announce ...
Sam Brooks reviews Amazon Prime’s Modern Love, an anthology series based on the New York Times column dedicated to ‘love in all its forms’. A first date that ends up in the emergency room. A flagging marriage that finds new energy through tennis. The founder of a dating app who doesn’t ...
If we want to grow support for New Zealand’s aid, we need to get better at partnering with the ‘unlike-minded’ as well as the ‘like-minded’, and much better at telling people what we do with the money they give, says Josie Pagani, Executive ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Orsola De Marco, Astrophysicist , Macquarie University If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au.How are stars made? –Zali, age 8, Karkoo, South Australia. How are stars made? Well, stars are not ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gita Mishra, Professor of Life Course Epidemiology, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Queensland All women know to expect the time in life when their periods finish and they reach menopause. Many might even look forward to it. What many women don’t ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul McGreevy, Professor of Animal Behaviour and Animal Welfare Science, University of Sydney Since ancient times, horse behaviour, and the bond between horses and humans, has been a source of intrigue and fascination. The horse-lore that has accumulated over the centuries is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachael Wallis, Lecturer and Honorary Research Fellow, University of Southern Queensland A move to the country is often presented in popular culture as an idyllic life, a place where you can escape the pressures of the city. It’s in television shows such ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW The just-announced inquiry into Australia’s retirement income system ought to be anything but run-of-the-mill. Taking place 25 years after the introduction of compulsory superannuation, it provides an opportunity to either fix a broken system, or discard ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Allan McCay, Law Lecturer, University of Sydney The rise of artificial intelligence has led to widespread concern about the role of humans in the workplaces of the future. Indeed, Israeli historian, futurist and publishing sensation Yuval Noah Harari warns in his most ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jen Saunders, Phd candidate, University of Wollongong Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains images and names of deceased people. You leave Sydney and head for holidays on the South Coast. You plan to catch a quick surf, ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Clayton Mitchell denies accusations around a night out, food insecurity on the rise, and UK PM Boris Johnson secures deal with dubious prospects.NZ First MP Clayton Mitchell has got himself in a spot of late night bother in a Tauranga ...
As the rugby world wrestles with the new reality that players can, and will, be dismissed for accidental contact with an opponent’s head it's worth pondering the fate of three All Blacks not selected for the Ireland quarterfinal. ...
A new exhibition in Raetihi offers a rare opportunity to see early, colonialism-focused works by Wellington artist Barbara Strathdee, writes Pat Baskett. ...
Italy's Ambassador to New Zealand Fabrizio Marcelli responds to Newsroom stories - and The Detail podcasts - questioning the price of imported tinned tomatoes in light of reports of slave labour in the industry in his home country. ...
A measles outbreak in Samoa suspected to be responsible for the death of a one-year-old was “inevitable”, according to an expert who thinks NZ could have prevented it. ...
The big shock of the results in the weekend’s local elections was the unseating of Justin Lester as Wellington mayor. We invited him to pen a sort-of-valedictory.My three years as the mayor of Wellington ended on Sunday and I will forever remain grateful for the experience.I’m also acutely aware of ...
We review the entire country and culture of New Zealand, one thing at a time. Today, Alex Braae reviews a night spent on the Intercity overnight sleeper bus getting from Wellington to Auckland.The most important thing to understand about long haul bus travel is that it’s all about getting exactly ...
Britain and the EU have agreed new terms for divorce. But with the Conservatives’ Northern Irish support party unimpressed, can the British prime minister at last put an end to the interminable shitstorm?At last, a deal! A palpable deal! A path out of the endless brain-melt!“Where there is a will, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Government sources insist shock jock Alan Jones didn’t drive Thursday’s announcement of a cash payment to drought-striken farmers about to be turfed off their household support because they’d reached the four year time limit. They ...
Open mike 04/12/2014 
Open mike is your post.
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No money for poverty.
No money for food in schools.
And why would our government, as Key has noted there are hardly any kids needing food in the schools he visits?
Will the government have some spare for some millionaires and billionaires needing a handout?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=11368472
No doubt another shameful aspect of NZ that the sociopaths like pr will defend.
No no no Paul you have got it wrong, think of all the jobs it will bring to NZ if the cup comes back to NZ. All those additional waiters and servants required on zero hours contracts.
sarc/
What about all the boat builders up and down the country.
Jobs well paid high skilled well paid jobs.
The boat building industry has grown from $120 million a year to $2 billion a year on the back of New technology and high quality workmanship.
After all the investment New Zealand has made in this high value industry it would be very foolish to throw it all away!
I have studied economics for a long time now,One big growth trend is making money out of wealthy people.
Its one Area in manfacturing that we are World leaders we can not afford to loose our edge.
7 Out of 10 America,s cup boats were built right here in New Zealand the GST payments off just this section of the boat building industry.
We also build super yatchs having our industry on show in Bermuda!
Its time we took the bull by the horns and looked for other niche manufacturing industries which New Zealand is good at and target the uber rich they have deep pockets and pay well.
Taxing them doesn,t work that well as they buy goverment or move their money to where they Don,t pay any tax!
Targeting products they buy and suppling the wealthy with high value high quality products is much smarter long term!
How many boat builders were able to employ more people at good wages after the 8 straight losses at the last exhibition of obscene wealth being blown around by the wind? Possibly less than we would have had without the stupid race.
Oh why not turn our entire economy into one designed to serve the 0.1%?
Won’t that be fun and fulfilling for everyone else?
At the end of the day however, such an economy doesn’t add up. Building McYachts, McMansions and selling McSUVs won’t form the backbone of any worthwhile civilisation.
CR
You are so right. While we wait for the situation to be redeemed maybe we should try to keep some industry afloat in NZ, something that’s in water and not milk.
Yeas of course.
Trickledown has worked so well for the past 30 years.
How much money would have to come into the country in boat building revenue to get 34million in tax off it . have to say I loved watching those big boats fly.
they build whether we win or lose. we have had world. lass designers and builders used by the world since the 70s
Yeah, so have I. The problem is that you’re not talking economics there but finances which is a completely different kettle of fish.
Economics is about managing limited resources, specifically, minimising their use. If the economics you champion results in ever greater use of those resources then it is uneconomic.
Where did you study economics, Draco?
I haven’t visited Auckland much, but I was there for a week recently. Two images have stuck in my mind: a yacht crew carrying their gear through the viaduct, emblazoned with brands and wearing sunglasses that cost more than I earn in a week, and the guys sleeping the the doorways of the city mission, next to the YMCA where I was staying.
Sadly, i think KDC should have saved his money for the yachties. It might well have had more impact on his position.
Would be OK if we actually won the damn thing, which to do you much actually be in front of the other boat when you cross the finish line. Despite what people might think, you cannot win the America’s Cup just by turning up to the race.
We have all moved on from 1995 and Peter Blake’s red socks.
The whole thing’s become a circus anyway. It used to be, that it you wanted to host an America’s Cup regatta, you had a win the thing. Now you can just write a cheque out and you get it anyway.
Peter Blake’s money raising red socks – buy and donate to the NZ challenging the big boys cause – not made in NZ red socks.
That is so common now it is a cliche. Even the RSA got their red poppies to remember the NZ fallen sourced from overseas – I think from Aussies who probably ordered them from Asia. e&oe This is conjecture though.
edited
Hope they do as it reinforces the govt priorities of the wealthy elite first…..another brick in the wall of arrogance muddle nz need to wake up to given such issues as you’ve highlighted Paul.
It used to be about boat racing, now it’s about the size of billionaires dicks or wannabes like JK.
john keys’ political bucket-list:..a report card..the top three..
number one:..asset-strip anything worth selling…done..!..(just some mopping up of state houses to attend to..)
number two:…long-war on poor/workers’-rights…underway..!..inequality rules..!
number three:..(finally!) get to go to actual war in iraq:..nearly done..nearly there..!
4. Degrade education so more charter schools can be set up ready for privatisation of education.
5. Degrade Health system so more private institutions and insurance can be set up ready for privatisation of health.
If you want to see our future under Key, just look at New Orleans in the U.S. , where shock doctrine was applied after Katrina to privatise education.
As for Health, watch Michael Moore’s Sicko to get a feel for the health policy Key and his cronies are prepared to deliver for their banking and corporate masters.
Hey, give Judith a break. She is obviously distressed with someone shoving a camera in her face. Have you heard of ‘noblesse oblige`’ ?
Even misguided conservatives should be treated with some respect.
My french is a bit rusty so if someone can correct it, please go ahead.
@ wairua..
..no she isn’t..she’s thinking about what she wd like to do to nicky hager..
..(she’s having a ‘crusher’-moment..)
That is a picture of Judith meditating.
It is actually a picture of her hitting a drum really hard with sticks …
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3AUUxZWMEpw/T39HcCb21dI/AAAAAAAAAV4/t9Yafhkrf9o/s1600/IMG_3756.jpg
“..hitting really hard with sticks ‘
like i said..what she wants to do to nicky hager..
Apologies to all concerned, including Judith. She is into her rhythm .. good to see musical talent in the cabinet. The cropped image gave a different impression.
Whose face was painted on the drum??
LOL! Odgers, Slater, Key fit the bill!
Surely you mean ‘mediating’, felix?
She is well-known for her gentle, mild and co-operative, inclusive manner.
I’ve just finished, as in five minutes ago, reading “Dirty Politics”. Sarcasm is the gentlest form of response to Judith Collins and her style of politics that I can muster.
@felix. Is that what you call it? 🙄
Nicky Hager didn’t do anything for her to lose her cabinet position. She was brought down by the members of her own DP side, people like Slater, Odgers and Key, remember?
@ clem..
“..remember?..”
i’m sure she does…
..the thing to remember with national..is those two warring factions..who hate each other almost more than they hate everyone else..
..there is the boag-faction..and for want of a better name..the slater-faction..
..and for onlookers/non-believers..it’s like choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea..
..hard to tell which is worse..
..and you kinda hope they will just fall upon and eat each other..
Above all, she brought herself down!
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/63799601/NZ-no-longer-least-corrupt
Now we are only the second least corrupt country on Earth, by a sliver.
I’m surprised no one posted this already.
you know what the word perceived means right?
I believe so…but if there is a point to that question I don’t get it?
*perception* does not always mesh with *reality*
maybe you should look at the image top left on your link
Picture of Judith – Poor Judith – a difficult moment in the smallest room in the backbenchers’ lobby looks to me. A concerted attempt to negate the resonating charge – “You’re full of it Jude !”
For those of you who think that spying was only a problem in East European countries and it was them damn Russkies who where so evil that they killed millions of their own for merely speaking truth to power, here is a nice history of the elite spying on their own people in the Western world. All 5000 years of it:
5,000 Years of History Shows that Mass Spying Is Always Aimed at Crushing Dissent
Bugger, Lost link. Here it is: 5,000 Years of History Shows that Mass Spying Is Always Aimed at Crushing Dissent
The other thing that concerns me is the fact that there is an incentive for groups like the GCSB, the SIS and the Police to favour right wing governments because RW govts will increase powers of surveillance. The actions or inactions on the Hager/Slater and Jon Stephenson reinforce my view that these groups are becoming more active in discouraging any dissent, almost as if they are sending out a warning to dissenters to intimidate them. How can environmentalists be regarded as “terrorists”? There was a good interview of Jason N Parkinson on Nine to Noon on the UK surveillance of journalists.
Those interested in the surveillance state expansion would be interested in thes interview with a Brit journalist this morning on Radio NZ. I heard part of it and remember him saying that he is a journalist who regularly covers protests and exposes behaviours on the left or right that are outside correct and lawful practices.
He commented that he had applied to see his secret service file and finally got it by knowing the small print and file No. to ask for and found how much stuff was on him. Exhaustive contents. Also environmental protests were noted and his work and contacts on those, yet one he did on some right wing outfit that started in 2009 and was revealed to be plotting events, with one Brit solder making nail bombs in his bedroom on his days off, was not mentioned.
It sounds as if the police are paranoid and definitely harrassed him as a registered journalist going about his lawful business. I think he said that in 2007 it seemed to be hotting up and in that year he was stopped, I think, 23 times and questioned while on his way to report some left-wing type of event.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/20159785
British journalists spied on by state, put on extremist list ( 24′ 12″ )
09:20 Jason N Parkinson is a freelance video journalist, who covers subjects ranging from environmental disaster to conflict. He was nominated for the Rory Peck News Award for his work during the Egyptian revolution and in London during the riots.
Jason is one of six members of the British National Union of Journalists who are asking the English High Court for a judicial review of the collection and retention of surveillance data about them. He says he and other journalists were subject to wide-ranging surveillance and put on a domestic extremist list, simply for doing their jobs.
When will the media stop presenting Transtasman as an impartial source?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/63807057/Key-head-and-shoulders-above-rest
Are they going to quote Farrar’s ratings as well?
What a ridiculous list. Maybe Farrar sent it off to them. Who the hell are Transtasman?
What alot of crap ! – “…..and his party romped home in its third election, the third time in a row it has added extra seats as well.”
Third time in a row ? Sorry ? It’s sort of normal I think that on winning one’s first term one normally wins additional seats. Sort of definitional.
So it’s actually the second time in a row.
That’s the sort of rubbish that happens when a know-nothing writer sets out to gush predisposed superlatives.
From the way they have been operating in the past few years I have often wondered that myself.
Just when you thought the media could not be more biased, they publish the view of a bunch of right wing journos.
FFS.
does Gerry Brownlee think hes …Hermann Goering!
nah..!..he is a reincarnated ‘colonel blimp’..that brownlee..
Chris Christie?
The US middle class spending crash
Most interesting in this Zero Hedge article are the comments – people scrimping and saving, unable or unwilling to spend money in restaurants and bars any more, going to home brew instead of buying a beer.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-02/middle-class-spending-crash-explained
Meanwhile in April this year, NYC apartment prices hit record highs of US$970K. Sounds very much like a tale of two cities eh. For the 1%, and that for everyone else.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-02/35-surge-sales-smashes-new-york-apartment-prices-record-high
The same is happening here in AKL. I have a small shop, hand made chocolates and the likes, and I can tell you from daily experience that people are counting the pennies, and then then turn them over a few times before spending them.
I am still doing well enough to keep myself and the two shop girls busy, but it should not get any worse.
But I guess you are not going to see an article in the NZ Herald about peeps not buying boats and big SUV on the paper value of their not yet paid off houses.
It is not a tale of two cities, it is a tale of a hand full of very rich against the rest of the country.
Well, retail and the service sector in Dunedin are definitely struggling at the moment (although as always there are stronger sectors and weaker ones). And looking around what should be the centre of town there are far too many empty commercial lots, many of them large, and a number of which have been untenanted for 6 months or more.
What no one is looking forward to is the flow on effect of lower milk prices…
Meanwhile the capitalists rub their hands and praise the prospect of doing business with the burgeoning middle class in China and India. The old middle class in USA has been decimated (into deciles) by their country’s business corporate machinations with their politicians. That is, the western capitalists have fouled their own nest but no matter, find a new nest to foul overseas and leave the chicks to rot in the old one.
“..6 Things You Should Know When Buying and Consuming Legal Marijuana..”
..Whether you haven’t toked since the 70′s –
– or you’re entirely new to the experience –
– here’s the starting place..”
(cont..)
(ed:..i’m having a ‘we can but dream’-moment..)
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/6-things-you-should-know-when-buying-and-consuming-legal-marijuana
I’m most impressed with David Parker who has regrouped after losing the leadership contest, and come out swinging strongly from the back benches, well done chap. Parker is absolutely correct that PC Plod are dragging their heels over investigating some of Hager’s claims.
The Fuzz are playing favourites, and I would like to know who is pulling their strings and why?
“Now I can’t name either of those sources and I can’t prove those allegations to be true and they are both hearsay allegations to me, but these allegations must be investigated.”
Littles doing well but he doesn’t need chumps like Parker dragging him down
I disagree, Little was doing well, till he supported the terror legislation. That just reminds me, as it should remind others – Labour are nothing but a bunch of corporate elects.
Well I think he showed pragmatism on that, its fine to be all tub thumping to appeal to your core but when you get the information you then have to do the right thing by your country and if hes elected leader then hes the leader of the whole of NZ not just the anti-war left
So on this its no negative feedback for Little
Anti-war, misdirection and diversion? I’m not anti-war – I just don’t see the point in fighting wars for other countries/corporations. This piece of legislation is an attack on civil liberties, I’d have thought the right wing were fan’s of freedom. As I get older, I’m finding they are not.
So let me be the voice of freedom – I don’t want my freedoms stomped on because your a little scaredy cat – who jumps at your own shadow. I’m over wimps on the right, who feel they are justified to feed their paranoia and fear to the general population.
The big bad terrorist ,is a lie – bit like the big bad communist lie. Just change the rhetoric from the 1950’s to now.
Well I respect your opinion but i think ISIS is something that needs to be combatted and it needs to be done by multiple countries
However Little must have something he wasn’t expecting to change his mind
Bollix
However Little must have seen something he wasn’t expecting to change his mind
Keep working on that comment, chris. It’s getting better every time.
?
Sure.
ISIS is falling apart, if we strangle off the money coming from the Saudi Arabia and others. Their days would be severely numbered. Good old economic terrorism that the west is good at. Why do we need to put troops on the ground? We don’t.
How can I be so confident ISIS is fubar? They have completely wiped out the middle classes, either in a physical sense or in the fact most of the professional classes are running away from them. How long do you think they will be able to operate a modern society, without a professional class? And failing that, how long do you think they will be able to contain a youthful population look at the luxury and lifestyle modernism has to offer? ISIS is a pitiful joke, and only nut jobs who want to send our young men and women off to die, seem to be under the illusion that this whacked out army of boy jihadists aren’t going to eat themselves – if we do the right thing, and cut the money off.
You are assuming they want a modern society which I doubt they want to go back to the dark ages were believing in mythical being’s are used to control the youthful population.
ISIS is something that needs to be stopped but they need to be stopped by the people who live there. If they’re stopped by those from outside then they’ll just arise again in a probably worse form.
We also need to work out why young men from all over Europe (the world?) are joining up to fight for groups for ISIS. It seems to me we are have thrown a whole generation of young people on the scrap heap, called them lazy and useless, and then wonder why they are starting to like what the bloke down at the local mosque has to say.
Great point millsy.
The anti-youth rhetoric has amped up of late.
We have thrown our young to the wolves. It sickens me. Neo-liberalism is a beast which eats our mokopuna.
+100 Draco. Could not agree more. But lets help the people there, by stopping ISIS getting the money from supporters around the region, and lets stop pretending Saudi Arabia is an ally of ours.
thanks for your concern /sarc
Hello c73
i dunno skinny..parker is still number one on my list of mp’s ‘most likely to go postal’..
..there is much grindingly-unfufilled there..anger both seethes and drips from him..it has even made his face all puffy/blotchy..and his voice has changed..all dangerous signs..)
..(in other recent moves on that list..brownlee has jumped to number two..and tho’ he is minister of defence..i wd advise he be kept well clear of any actual weapons..
..and of course.kennedy graham..with his death-ray eyes/gaze is always somewhere in the top five..
..and foss-the-hapless often seems to be barely hanging on..so is also there..)
@Skinny – I think DP is Shadow Attorney General?
Yes, he’s doing well with this call. “Go David.”
Ngati poaka don’t need their strings pulled. They know instinctively where their loyalties lie. In that respect, they’re a lot like journalists. What they both need is continuous pressure to do their jobs properly.
Is there anyone here, artist/cartoonist, that can draw a caricature of Key, with the Pinocchio’s long nose, with his pants on fire, hands raised high up in the air like Nixon’s and a speech bubble coming out of his bum with the words, “Awkchully, honestly speaking, at the end of the day, I don’t lie!”
or..referring to slater..
“i did not have proactive-relations with that man”..
You seen this:
“John Key has been given what could be the first in a string of politician-of-the-year awards, with the annual Trans Tasman roll call putting him “head and shoulders” above the rest”.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/63807057/Key-head-and-shoulders-above-rest
Yuck.
Yes Trans Tasman do seem to have been getting steadily dafter and right over the years. Their analysis used to be pretty good with a known slant.
But everything I have seen in recent years can be characterized as being written by a wingnut and one with a similar political and economic skill level to Mike Hoskings – ie more characterized by bigotry than analysis.
and of course all of the above over-qualifies him to be on ‘the panel’ of sages..on nat-rad..
..so he is..
At a superficial glance, he does seem preferable to idiots like Abbott and Bjelke-Newman. However, with a second glance you see that the only difference is in the presentation. They’re all as thick, dishonest, and arrogant as each other.
On the Trans Tasman basis it would be a straight forward choice to give Putin international politician of the year then.
The single most significant task facing Aotearoa –
IMO it is identifying exactly how much and which areas of our land are now in foreign ownership, or longterm leasehold. When the land is gone, what do have? Who are we? Do we even exist as a nation? There is an urgent need for a comprehensive audit of this, with publication of the results, as well as the basic register of foreign owners.
The housing shortage is only one part of the problem: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11368465
Will be a useless register while folks can fly in from China for a weekend on a visa given because of their gold credit card status and buy as much property as they wish to purchase, tax-free with money borrowed at 0.5% in China and easy to get into NZ due to direct currency trading now of Chinese renmimbi to NZ dollars. (Thanks JK.)
I’m not xenophobic, but reporting facts. One Chinese ‘tourist’ man can be identified as now owning 50 houses in Auckland by doing exactly as I have written above.
Where to begin to correct this ? Well said, Manuka AOR –beyond urgent, isn’t it.
Why are we just letting it go on? It’s a kind of insanity, imo.
This is our LAND! This is our Nation. This is what and who we are.
The Gallipoli Centenary is approaching and they are making much of it. Our ancestors fought there so that we could have this land. Several of mine were there and not all returned. They in turn lost sons during WW II for the same reason – that we could have a country that was ours, that was free.
We are throwing this all away!!
I don’t begin to comprehend it.
It is not just Auckland, and it is not just John Key.
Anecdotally, there are many ‘banked’ properties reported in Sydney and Melbourne
– see ‘www.catherinecashmore.com.au’ who has just published
“SPECULATIVE VACANCIES 7” which I think can be downloaded from that link.
One has to be careful due to echoes of the ‘White Australia’ policy but there is also evidence that the China boom has peaked in many markets and there are cities of unsold apartments in China itself.
A global bubble is playing out – and given levels of unsustainable debt in some quarters most rational observers are hoping for a soft landing.
Whether that will happen is another story, but Aotearoa is a very small player in all this.
However, despite our size we can choose to go our own way.
The end result of mass utilisation of housing as investment vehicles while at the same time divesting social and state housing – can be seen in The Great British Property Scandal series, and in this 2014 Guardian article: Scandal of Europe’s 11m empty homes
@ Wairua
There are reports of empty apartments that have replaced old housing which was being lived in. The new is of course too dear for the previous dwellers to rent. I remember reading about it. Also there has been much money spent on infrastructure and city building as in the empty apartments.
It seems to me a deliberate policy to turn earnings and profits into tangible assets, as the future of the financial system is uncertain. Profits left sitting can be undermined by inflation, and deliberate crashing of the financial system which would wipe out the previous Chinese accumulated credits.
I think the Chinese are being canny and converting the paper money into bricks and steel. Perhaps the message of the Yip Harburg song about Al the hard worker, now beggar, of the USA in Buddy Can You Spare a Dime has been received loud and clear by the Chinese. They don’t want to be the Als, with a lot of useless money. This version is probably the best you’ll hear and see and uses the word Buddy rather than Brother which seems less authentic.
Yes, but what they’ve done is turn housing into yet another speculative financial asset. Collateral which is hypothecated then rehypothecated, leveraged then overleveraged, then securitised and sold on to unsuspecting investors. Certainly an apartment block is more “concrete” than $10M of numbers in an electronic account which can be “vapourised” at a key stroke, but the way it is being treated now – like dairy farms which will soon never be able to pay back their mortagages – makes them worth little more than unaffordable McMansion junk.
And that’s assuming all these units which have been built with nothing more than profit in mind, don’t leak.
CR
That’s a good point. Just thinking of the reality of leaky buildings which we found here. Leave them for a while and they can be full of deadly fungus that gets up people’s noses, literally. And nearly possible to eradicate. In apartment buildings they would have to spray individual apartments then possibly gas them as well and leave them closed for a time to penetrate and kill the organisms. Then leave them open for a week, then probably have to turn fans on as some of the gas might be heavier than air or something.
One of the problems with rented buildings in NZ is people don’t open their windows to let fresh air in. Perhaps because of fear of burglars, or they aren’t used to the concept of airing rooms and having fresh air and sunshine coming in. Leaving the windows closed all the time leads to a build-up of mould, which is preventable if the rooms are aired daily with a flow from one side of the house to the other. I haven’t heard this mentioned when damp, unhealthy houses are mentioned, but some people have to be educated apparently as to such good and necessary practice. They should fit their own burglar and child proof attachments to one window in every room if the landlord won’t do it.
We are tenants in our own country.
And we have an international bankster facilitating the transfer of wealth to his bosses.
NEWSFLASH!
Some athletes have a conscience
Sportspeople, past and present, are generally brainless, conformist halfwits—New Zealanders will be all too familiar with such unedifying and depressing examples as Israel Dagg, Corey Jane, that dopey mustachioed rower who barracked for John Key, Dick Quax, Paul Quinn… the list is too long and depressing to finish, but you get the picture.
But there ARE genuinely thoughtful, decent people involved in sports. Here are just a few of them…..
1.) In 2005, French goalkeeper Fabien Barthez refused to play against an Israeli team, as a protest against Israel’s depradations in the Occupied Territories….
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3062948,00.html
2.) In 2011, Irish rugby stars Trevor Hogan, Gordon D’Arcy, Eoin Reddan and John Fogarty spoke out in favour of the Gaza peace flotilla…..
http://www.joe.ie/uncategorized/video-irish-rugby-stars-back-gaza-flotilla/25039
3.) Some New Zealand and Australian rugby stars from as long ago as 1960 were protesting against touring, or even playing against, South Africa.
4.) Just last week, Wallabies star David Pocock was arrested for taking part in an anti-mining protest.
5.) St Louis Rams players making a statement about police brutality. The only shame here is that there seem to be no white players supporting them…..
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/01/missouri-police-st-louis-gesture-nfl-michael-brown?CMP=twt_gu
“Sportspeople, past and present, are generally brainless, conformist halfwits”
Yeah thats not a generalization or nothing
Yeah he really should have made it clear he was generalising, maybe by saying “generally” or something 🙄 🙄 🙄
Not that you’d have noticed, it’s not like you read anything before you type 🙄 🙄 🙄
Even though it was in the sentence you quoted 🙄 🙄 🙄
Can we get some new trools please? This is just the same one that got banned yesterday and it’s fecking useless.
Sorry should have added massive generalization and incredibly petty and small minded judging an extremely large group of people by a very small group of drop kicks
I love the way sportspeople at times cry “… keep politics out of sport …” ….
… then in the very next breath ask politicians to pay for their work premises (stadiums) …. the hypocrisy ….
I agree, I wouldn’t pay a cent towards Team NZ (as another example)
Yep. And how about the cries here in Chch from rich professional sports business people for elderly ratepayers to pay for a new stadium with a roof to keep their heads dry and warm when they can’t even fill the current stadium?? And when we are struggling to pay for replacement sewers and roads and libraries and swimming pools for the kids??
Quite astounding.
Funny though that most of those rich sports business people have realised their folly and gone quiet in embarassment. They no longer ask for the poor and elderly ratepayers to pay for their work premises.
Yes but lets not lump all sportspeople in with the people running said sports
Nothing wrong with the occasional generalisation – there is generally something in said generalisations..
And it aint just people running such sports (cycling types are always calling for the elderly to pay for their velodromes too) who make this call, it is too often the players and participants themselves. It is heard all the time amongst general sports talk.
Cricket has just been given such largesse in Chch with new Hagley Park grounds.
It is a classic race to the bottom – best example being the Olympics. Olympics plays off cities against one another to see who can do the best deal. End result being that all host cities end up chronically in debt with pretty much no benefit whatsoever.
Sport has been riding this game for a while now – be interesting to see how much longer it lasts. Personally, I think cities should call the bluff of the rugby unions, the Olympics committees, the velodrome nutters, the Americas cup bludgers, the V8 racers, and give them zip. If they don’t come then so f%$king what? Net result is a win for the cities as these events always cost – there is never a net benefit.
I agree with this however you can make a profit from the Olympics but its very hit and mess
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_the_Olympic_Games
The net benefit is to the egos of politicians and their mates in the very select business niches that do profit from such events.
Yeah, in the same way beneficiaries and the parents of poor children are depicted when tories claim that the parents waste any money on booze, drugs, and cigarettes.
Well sports is one of the areas where left and right wingers can and do interact
The rugby club used to be a microcosm of NZ society (not always in a good way i grant you) where blue collar and white collar got on and discussed the importanct issues of the day (well probably not)
Just thinking that lumping the majority of sportspeople who play for the love of the game in with the administrators of tha games (which is where the problems usually begin) is a quite short sighted
I can’t be the only one who thinks its a great sight going past (or when i get roped in myself) touch fields filled with all kinds of people playing simply because its enjoyable
and yes I’m wearing rose-tinted glasses
Poor parents from all sides of the political and socio-economic spectra interact at play groups.
Lumping all beneficiaries and working poor in together is short-sighted, too.
I’m sure they do however I have zero experience of play groups and extensive experience of sports clubs
Surely you must still pass them on occasion, and think it’s a great sight that parents and kids of all backgrounds can get together for the simple joy of social interaction?
So we are all agreed then.
Crude generalization of what are in fact complex groupings of real people is just bigotry, and to prove the superior moral tone of the left, there will be no more of it on this blog.
The exception being when the generalisation is based on a characterisation by which the groupings are delineated – calling tories “fuckwits”, for example, is merely a description that emphasises one of the characteristics that makes a tory a tory.
That kind of hypocrisy puts you on the same moral and intellectual plane as a tory fuckwit.
nope, I’m nothing like you.
True that.
For a start I have a life outside of left wing blogs.
And I pride myself on taking any point head on and trying to grapple with it, rather than attempting to lead the discussion up a side road every time I strike a sharp retort.
yup, and I see all people as genuine and real and worthy of respect, in all their endless variation of political opinion, as opposed to a simplistic division into 2 camps of saints and fuckwits…
But I’m probably eating up your band width here, so back to you.
I don’t need to trool opposing blogsites to provoke negative reactions that I can then use to pretend that my life has any level of meaning or significance in the universe and reinflate my delusional sense of adequacy. That’s all you.
There’s that unfounded false equivalence we know and love.
You really sound like c73
acually is dolan.
Morrissey
Good one, Morrissey. Had no idea about Barthez’s protest against Israel’s brutality back in 05. It’s pretty rare for me to praise a former Man Utd player (or, indeed, anyone or anything to do with that particular club) but good on him.
1960 AB Tour of Apartheid South Africa. Certainly the great George Nepia protested. By the early 70s, Ken Gray and Chris Laidlaw had moved in the same direction and, of course, by 81 AB Captain Graham Mourie and Centre, Bruce Robertson.
Incidentally, Frank Bunce (from memory) was the main (possibly only ?) Celebrity endorser for the Alliance in the 1996 (or was it 99 ?) election campaign. Starkly contrasting with the Michael Jones, Paul Quinns and Tuigamalas of this world.
Overall, though, I think it’s reasonable to conclude that professional sportspeople do indeed tend to be as Thick as Mince.
Overall, though, I think it’s reasonable to conclude that sportspeople do indeed tend to be as Thick as Mince.
– no thats quite unreasonable when you look at the number of people who play sport vs the drop kicks who bring the game into disrepute
As an example theres a little over 145 000 registered rugby players, 140 000 approx registered Netball players NZ and around 22 000 registered league players in NZ
Yeah, I immediately edited in professional just to add a little more clarity and precision (presumably while you were in the middle of composing your reply).
Personally, I played football (ie soccer) from age 8 to 39 (competitively on Saturday, socially on Sunday, and the Indoor variety during the week).
Hey Paul, look how it does quotes and responses. lolz.
And Israel Dagg…
Didn’t he tweet for the elite on Election Day?
He tweeted for the scum, actually. Pub must have been closed.
Rugby’s association with alcohol has had many negative consequences for many New Zealand citizens.
Its were I polished my drinking skills as a teenager hopefully rugby clubs are more responsible now
“1960 AB Tour of Apartheid South Africa. Certainly the great George Nepia protested. By the early 70s, Ken Gray and Chris Laidlaw had moved in the same direction and, of course, by 81 AB Captain Graham Mourie and Centre, Bruce Robertson.”
I have noticed that the men who you mentioned seem to have had their talents largely unutilized by the NZRFU after their careers came to an end, apart from a breif stint coaching the Hurricanes/Lions in Mourie’s case. while those that went on the 1986 rebel Cavaliers tour ended up enjoying large amounts of oppurtunities in administration and coaching long after their playing careers ended.
Of course, it could be purely co-incidental. and talking to any administrator from around that era would come up with a truck load of denials. But it does seem fishy, that those who stood up against NZ Rugby’s contact with SA seemed to find their rugby careers curtailed.
Morrissey, do you have any idea why Graham Bell is invited on the Panel?
I don’t understand why his boorish ill educated views are sought after.
Morrissey, do you have any idea why Graham Bell is invited on the Panel?
He’s a celebrity, and he expresses himself forcefully. That works well on radio.
I don’t understand why his boorish ill educated views are sought after.
I agree with you that he often sounds boorish, and I have often cringed—or raged—at some of the things he has said. Today, for instance, he tried to argue that the arrest of a top cop in Northland for selling drugs showed how incorruptible the New Zealand Police are. Disappointingly, neither the host Simon Mercep nor Selwyn Manning decided to challenge him on that point. Bell also made a crazed attack on Nicky Hager; Mercep and Manning let that pass as well.
On the other hand, Graham Bell does have an enlightened and tolerant side; he was relatively civilized and intelligent when he commented on the need to respect Maori protocols and language a few years ago.
Thanks.
Always appreciate your insights.
‘
6.) World-renowned Kiwi netball champion, Irene Van Dyk, has given her backing to the #BeCrueltyFree New Zealand campaign for a ban on cruel and outdated animal testing for cosmetics such as mascara, shampoo and anti-wrinkle cream.
That’s good to hear. However, I have heard her on several occasions ranting about how dangerous South Africa is “now”, implying it wasn’t dangerous before the blacks took over. Talk to a white South African, and there’s a high probability that kind of lazy racist rhetoric will spill forth eventually.
During the apartheid years, the primary violence (I think) was the institutional injustice and violence from the white government and the powerful white landowners against the blacks. Now the violence is primarily due to economic, drug, gang reasons I think. I am not sure as I am not familiar with the actual situation there apart from reading about car jackings, burglary,rapes and heaps of murders. Not sure if it is racially motivated. Is it?
White South Africans raving about how dangerous South Africa has become in the last twenty years is racist.
I am not sure if it is that simplistic. She may be meaning the reality, the common violence (not the apartheid violence) on the streets now which ‘probably’ did not exist previously. I do not know. Would be interesting to hear factual views of the situation there now of any South African readers. It is difficult for people to express honest views if they are then defined/characterised/judged by others as being racist.
No I don’t think Irene Van Dyk is some kind of Paul Holmes or John Ansell. She seems to be a pleasant person. I don’t think she’s nasty or overtly racist; but the idea that South Africa has gone to the pack since Mandela was released is a racist trope that is often recycled by white South Africans.
South Africa certainly hasn’t gone to the pack since Mandela was released, but the ANC is far more ruthlessly market-oriented that the old white Nationalist Party was. The transition in South Africa is interesting in a horrible kind of way because the ruling class managed successfully (and it was an impressive achievement) to de-couple apartheid and capitalism, with the former being abolished and the latter being strengthened at the same time.
See:
South Africa’s non-revolution:
http://rdln.wordpress.com/2012/07/06/south-africas-non-revolution/
Nelson Mandela and the travesty of liberation: http://rdln.wordpress.com/2013/12/06/nelson-mandela/
Mandela and New Zealand – our ‘Diana Moment’?: http://rdln.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/mandela-and-new-zealand-our-diana-moment/
Phil
I always ask a South African when they left the country.
Many seemed happy to stay under apartheid, but left when the whites lost political ascendancy.
Of course, as Naomi Klein and others have highlighted, the white establishment maintained its economic stranglehold over the country.
Sounds like you’re bullshitting again, moz. But as you’ve heard these rants many times, you’ll have no problem backing up your claim, eh.
Sounds like you’re bullshitting again, moz.
Okay, have it your way. In Te Ao Te Reo, white South African “exiles” never reflexively parrot racist tropes, just as your good self has never reflexively parroted black propaganda—-that means lies, by the way, not propaganda by black people—-against journalists and truth-tellers.
But as you’ve heard these rants many times, you’ll have no problem backing up your claim, eh.
I heard her interviewed several times by Murray (AKA “Deaks”, AKA “The Screaming Skull”, AKA The Most Dismal Sports Commentator Ever) Deaker and she almost always talked about how dangerous South Africa had become.
As I say, back it up. I’m sure a quick search will find copies of those interviews. Otherwise you are just attributing to an individual a trope you believe applies to all white South Africans. That’s kinda like racism, eh?
btw, I have a good friend who is in his mid fifties and who left SA a few years ago and who says the place is definitely more dangerous post apartheid. Is he racist, too? He’ll be surprised to hear it, being the lovely, liberal and man that he is.
As an aside, while SA is still astonishingly dangerous, the violent crime rate is actually dropping. Not by enough, but dropping all the same. I have a sneaking suspicion that it always was violent, but prior to the democratic changes only crimes against the dominant community were recorded in any detail, making the joint seem a lot safer than it really was.
I have a good friend who is in his mid fifties and who left SA a few years ago and who says the place is definitely more dangerous post apartheid.
He certainly sounds it. Decades ago The Specials had some spot-on advice for people like you….
I’ll be sure to let him know you think he’s a racist, Moz. As someone with a south Asian family heritage and classified as ‘Indian’ under apartheid, he knows a thing or two about the matter.
Some of the stupidest, most racist comments you’ll hear in this country are made by the likes of Willy Jackson, Tau Henare and Winston Peters. They should know a thing or two about racism as well, but it doesn’t stop them saying the most incendiary things.
So if your friend is saying that South Africa becoming a democratic state is a bad thing, then his ethnicity should not immunize him against criticism, surely?
A simple ‘well played, Sir’ would have been a better response, Moz 😉
Great to hear. All those are Labour party policies as you can see below and in the link:
Care for animals
* Banning cruel shark finning
* No cosmetics sold in New Zealand tested on animals
* No synthetic highs tested on animals
* Protecting Animals’ Rights
See more info here:
http://campaign.labour.org.nz/caring_for_animals
(questiontime in parliament today..)
(excerpt:..
(shudder..!..collins is in shot..and at first she pastes on that grimace pretending to be a smile she uses..but then she falls into repose..
..and i gotta say..it’s a grim screenshot..that one…
..one to make babies cry/dogs howl..and plants to wilt..)
http://whoar.co.nz/2014/new-zealand-parliament-list-of-questions-for-oral-answer-thursday-4-december-2014/
Selwyn Manning on the Panel.
Brilliant.
Already putting the spokesperson for the Hospitality industry under pressure.
Simon Mercep doing the Panel a lot better than Mora by simply letting the Panel talk.
Spying under Labour gives a hint at why they’re happy to vote for extended powers:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0411/S00272.htm
Jesus Murray Rawshark, I wished I had seen that Scoop article in November 2005.
Be assured the surveillance of ordinary NZers has been occurring on and off for decades, and it didn’t just apply to Maori activists. Neither was it just the SIS. The police were also up to their eyeballs in clandestine political surveillance.
I still don’t know whether it was the SIS or the police who targeted me in the late 70s/80s and early 90s. Some of the incidents were witnessed by others and a former boss of mine was known to be a SIS informant. With the benefit of hindsight I have long since realised that… as a public servant who was also active in the Labour Party, I was a sitting target. There was also a political associate (a woman) who went to extraordinary lengths to befriend me and who – years later – I discovered had been ‘informing’ on me.
I spent years trying to get to the bottom of it all, but came up against a brick wall every time. But along the way, I learnt a lot about the NZ establishment and how it sometimes operated. Not a pretty sight!
Edit: I don’t believe successive Labour leaders – up to and possibly including Helen Clark – had any knowledge of these particular spying activities. It would have been going on behind their backs.
@ Anne
Who would have been driving the surveillance? Who would have benefited from it and what was the cultural imperative for it?
Who would have been driving the surveillance?
Back in the 1960s/70s and at least part of the 80s, I think it was, in the main, a police unit of right wing thugs – the sort who find themselves with a bit of power and it goes to their heads. We’ve seen quite a few public instances of their conduct over the years, the most prominent being police brutality during the Springbok tour protests in the mid 1970s and early 80s. However there have been many documented examples of politicians and ordinary individuals having also been targeted for highly spurious reasons – the most famous being Colin Moyle.
Who would have benefited from it?
The various National governments of the day starting with Keith Holyoake followed by Marshall and eventually Muldoon – especially Muldoon.
What was the cultural imperative for it?
In a nut-shell it was obsessive Cold War paranoia on the part of Western establishments around the world. NZ was not immune from the condition. It meant that anyone to the left of Genghis Khan (slight exaggeration) was suspected of being a Communist subversive. There is no question the police (and no doubt the SIS) had infiltrators inside the Labour Party and that probably included the particular electorate to which I was attached. I was far from the only Labour activist who reported strange ‘going ons’ throughout that time. In my case there was an added consideration (too complex to explain here) that meant I was targeted – and my father before me – in an even more insidious way.
It still occurs of course but in more subtle ways. I think lprent’s niece, Rocky is a good example in more recent times.
There was a poaka intelligence unit set up in the late 70s to keep an eye on potential threats. I met a couple of them who worked openly, but there were plenty who worked secretly as well. They targeted groups including outlaw biker clubs, Mongrel Mob and Black Power, Polynesian youth groups, and hippies on Coromandel communes, that I know of.
If they know that the squirrels do stuff behind their backs and still vote them extra powers, I consider that even worse.
Article in stuff buy simon day about dirty politics effect on public health .
It’s here:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/63816549/Scientists-are-undermined-by-attack-campaigns-expert
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/63846480/China-orders-further-crackdown-on-media
Didn’t John, Bronagh, and Max Key just meet this guy, and give him Buck Shelford’s jersey?
John Key must be very impressed by Xi Ping’s ability to shut down dissenting media.
Former Guantanamo chief prosecutor writes about torture.
The bigger question will be what now? The U.S. led the effort to enact the Convention Against Torture (CAT), a treaty that has been ratified by nearly every country in the world, including the United States. When President Ronald Reagan sent the CAT to the Senate for ratification in 1988 he said it clearly expressed “United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice,” and noted that it “required (a signatory) either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.” The CAT also requires us to provide alleged victims of torture a legal avenue to pursue compensation.
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20141203152106-71898210-in-advance-of-the-senate-torture-report
Do Colin Craig and the Conservatives hibernate until election year.He actually had some sound policy to deal with rampant property prices.