“We can but hope that Democracy in New Zealand First wins out.”
Sorry Curwen, but if you have to petition the Board of Directors of your party not to stand a candidate in order to protect the party, you don’t have a democracy.
It seems to me that NZF has often enough hit the dart board in and then near the centre and that has been enough plus winsome, witty, doughty Winnie to keep NZF in the limelight and provide alternatives to the other options. He keeps on though getting older, to have appeal to many.
It seems that Shane Jones will have an appeal also particularly to those who like to talk in everyday language not political fancy talk and exude manliness in a regular blokey way. He could take NZFirst on from Winnie where otherwise it would just collapse without him, like a worn-out balloon. And his values would stand up to scrutiny probably more than most other pollies.
“And his values would stand up to scrutiny probably more than most other pollies.”
Did you read the linked post? Curwen Ares Rolinson, a NZF activist, is basically saying that not only are Jones’ values not compatible with NZF, but that he lacks the degree of integrity required to be an NZF MP (I disagree on that one, but only because Peters’ integrity fluctuates with the breeze. Hmm, maybe Jones is a good fit after all).
(as an aside, I’ve been releasing your comments from Spam. Might be good to get that issue sorted before the book club).
Okay I take your point but often values talk does not match reality. As you say Winston’s can alter. They can even take on a different light from morning to evening.
Sorry about that, but may not succeed before the 12th and after that the task will be mainly off site till the discussion won’t it? I am hoping to get a new computer fairly soon. But I got some advice from you which I have put in my notes and I think one was to look at my cookies. But I have a matter coming up in the next few days that I must concentrate on. So thanks for your help at present and I’ll try to get improved sooner than later.
The article links a paper from the Congressional Research Service (non-partisan government body to provide factual information to Congress) that concludes that tax on capital gains income and dividends really needs to go up. Note that in New Zealand, income from capital gains is untaxed, and dividend income from company profit is only taxed once (often at a lower rate than earned income), whereas in the US the company pays tax on profit, then the recipient of dividends paid from that profit also pays income tax on it a second time.
Haven’t time to read it, but would just like to reply to the notion of increasing taxes on income from capital. As a non-home owner, with a little savings in the bank, I pay tax every year on the interest gained.
I think that savers probably have their/our “capital” taxed more than home owner’s get taxed on the rising value of their homes, and probably more than business profits.
Yep. Regular people have interest from small bank deposits and get stung for taxes at their top rate on it. The really wealthy don’t much bother with bank deposits, and put their capital into other things that , surprise surprise, are taxed at lower rates or not at all.
It’s those other things that need to be taxed more.
On the flip side, people should have access to savings for when things go wrong. Savings should be encouraged. In Uk they have an ISA system so that people can save a certain amount per year tax free.
This is especially important when people’s jobs are so transient now and it is so easy to lose your job, have a family or health emergency and in the age of self employment.
One of the advantages of Clark was that even though she was a neoliberal she bought in Kiwisaver, working for families, interest free student loans, buying back state assets like Kiwirail, supported the arts more.
Since she’s left, Labour’s policy appears to be lets charge the everyone (especially middle NZ) more to keep a lesser version of what we already have.
There needs to actually be a policy to help the majority of people! Sometimes it feels like there is just an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff and there are more and more people needing that ambulance.
Too much stick, zero carrot. It’s not popular.
I think that Labour is changing though and will lead the next government.
I’d like to see a referendum on UBI too. That is what could really change things in NZ away from the ambulance at bottom of cliff policy.
@ Andre – +100 “Gawd we need some sort of government guarantee for ordinary people’s simple savings accounts. Pretty much every other developed country has one.”
I think Greens have this as policy, does Labour???
It is disgraceful that our money is not safe in banks.
EXCEPT that the bank can take 10%? when thing go bad.
When you loan someone money you’re taking the risk that you’re not going to get it back.
That applies when you put you money in a bank as well.
The only time that it wouldn’t apply is a state bank that paid zero interest, didn’t charge fees and was supported through general taxation. That state bank would also be the sole owner and maintainer of the electronic payments system as well.
I agree New Zealand is lacking incentives to save – Kiwisaver being the only program aimed at retirement. I’d like to see something added to help ordinary people build and hold some kind of emergency fund.
The US has a whole zoo’s worth of different plans, 401k (a bit like Kiwisaver), Individual Retirement Accounts (money goes in pre-tax, grows tax-exempt, taxed on withdrawal after retirement), 529 (saving for your kids’ college), medical expenses accounts etc etc. I wouldn’t like to see NZ go down that path, it’s too much of a mess.
Great point save nz. Whether inflation is low and therefore low interest, or higher and then higher interest, taxing interest on savings is robbing the saver of part of their capital which should remain intact to limit the erosion of its value and spending power by the inevitable rising prices in the market even when there is low inflation and which are caused by a variety of circumstances.
In NZ the deterioration in value of savings is particularly affected at present by the mostly unmeasured inflation coming from the costs of owning or renting housing.
As far as I can tell, the NZ tax haven laws don’t actually (legally) help US citizens or tax residents avoid US taxes. Anyone answerable to the US IRD that’s hiding income via NZ would be guilty of illegal evasion, not “legitimate avoidance”.
It’s a different story for other countries though.
But due to the lack of transparency – nobody would ever be able to find out if you were evading taxes, as the real directors do not need to be disclosed in JK’s NZ tax havens.
Yeah, but then they’re tax evaders. Actual criminals risking jail time. That’s how they put away Al Capone in the end. The US IRS is a bit more enthusiastic about tossing big noters in the slammer for not coughing up than the paper tigers here.
Only here in NZ it seems if you know the right people everything is ok. That was one of the revolting things coming out of Panama papers – how many politicians and corporations felt they needed tax havens to hide their slushy funds.
That’s quite a philosophical debate in it’s own right.
It could be argued that being able to receive passive income simply from owning a partial stake in a company is so strongly dependent on the laws and basic fairness of an orderly society that it’s totally fair that the company contributes a share and the individual contributes another share to maintaining that society.
Only some companies are not fair and our and international laws don’t provide for companies having to maintain society. AKA Peter Thiel’s investment in NZ – did he have to pay 28% company tax and 33% income tax on his 10+ million ‘windfall’ from the tax payer – or did he pay zero/minimal tax and make a killing that should have been for the public purse?
I don’t know the exact details of Thiel’s investment. So everything in this comment is guesswork or speculation. But it appears most of the investment was in Xero. Which hasn’t made a profit nor paid dividends, ever. Yet. So it won’t have paid any company tax.
The increase in value that Thiel is enjoying seems to be purely capital gain. Which doesn’t get taxed in New Zealand (unless it’s in a short-term trading scenario). So as far as I can tell, the only benefit New Zealand’s VIF got from getting tied up with Valar was getting a small amount of effectively interest when Valar bought out VIF’s stake. So Valar really did manage to privatize the capital gain, but if there had been losses they would have been socialised.
I’ve got no idea how Valar is structured with respect to US taxes. But I’ll take a guess that if it’s a US company it’s probably structured as some sort of partnership, in which case the company doesn’t pay tax because the profits are passed straight through to the partners. I’ll guess the transactions would also be structured so they are capital gains rather than trading income, since capital gains are taxed at a lower rate in the US.
Note though that so far it all appears to be paper gains. No actual income or profit will happen until Valar sells some of it’s holdings.
Make the corporations pay their share ………….. and it’s approx $10 Billion in extra revenue for the Govt ……. every year.
As a bonus if you can stop the corruption of the accountants, lawyers and banks in our ‘developed’ western societies …you will eliminate poverty …. stop wars …….. be able to do something about deforestation etc etc etc
“In January of 1962, Russell received a series of letters from an unlikely correspondent — Sir Oswald Mosley, who had founded the British Union of Fascists thirty years earlier. Mosley was inviting — or, rather, provoking — Russell to engage in a debate, in which he could persuade the moral philosopher of the merits of fascism. Russell’s considered and morally unflinching response, included in Ronald Clark’s excellent biography The Life of Bertrand Russell (public library), stands as a manifesto for the right not to engage in a debate with a counterpart so morally misaligned with oneself as to guarantee not only the self-defeating futility of such engagement but its detrimental cost to one’s own sanity.
Shortly before his 90th birthday, Russell writes:
Dear Sir Oswald,
Thank you for your letter and for your enclosures. I have given some thought to our recent correspondence. It is always difficult to decide on how to respond to people whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repellent to one’s own. It is not that I take exception to the general points made by you but that every ounce of my energy has been devoted to an active opposition to cruel bigotry, compulsive violence, and the sadistic persecution which has characterised the philosophy and practice of fascism.
I feel obliged to say that the emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us.
I should like you to understand the intensity of this conviction on my part. It is not out of any attempt to be rude that I say this but because of all that I value in human experience and human achievement.
Wow marty mars Russell put his thoughts very cogently into words that resonate across the years being both memorable and entirely valid. Thanks for that.
Does Labour have such an
“ACTION PLAN TO ENSURE ‘OPEN, TRANSPARENT AND DEMOCRATICALLY ACCOUNTABLE’ NZ GOVERNMENT AND JUDICIARY”?
1) Make ALL ‘facilitation payments’ illegal.
2) Legislate to create an NZ independent anti-corruption body, tasked with educating the public and preventing corruption.
3) Legislate for NZ Members of Parliament (who make the laws for everyone else) to have a legally enforceable ‘Code of Conduct’.
4) Make it an offence under the Local Government Act 2002, for NZ local government elected representatives to breach their ‘Code of Conduct’.
5) Make it a lawful, mandatory requirement for Local Government elected representatives to complete a ‘Register of Interests’ which is available for public scrutiny.
6) Make it a lawful, mandatory requirement for Local Government staff, responsible for property or procurement, to complete a ‘Register of Interests’ which is available for public scrutiny.
7) Make it a lawful, mandatory requirement for Local Government Council Controlled Organisation (CCO)) Directors and staff, staff, responsible for property or procurement, to complete a ‘Register of Interests’ which is available for public scrutiny.
8) Fully implement and enforce the Public Records Act 2005, to ensure public records are available for public scrutiny.
9) Make it a lawful requirement that that a ‘cost-benefit analysis’ of NZ Central Government and Local Government must be undertaken, to prove that private procurement of public services previously provided ‘in-house’ is cost-effective for the majority of taxpayers and ratepayers.
10) Legislate for a legally enforceable ‘Code of Conduct’ for members of the NZ Judiciary, to ensure they are not ‘above the law’.
11) Legislate to provide a publicly-available NZ Judicial ‘Register of Interests’, to help prevent ‘conflicts of interest’.
12) Ensure ALL Court proceedings are recorded, with audio records available to parties who request them.
13) Legislate for a publicly-available NZ ‘Register of Lobbyists’ and ‘Code of Conduct’ for lobbyists.
14) Legislate for a ‘post-separation employment’ (‘revolving door’) quarantine period from the time public officials leave the public service, to take up a similar role in the private sector.
15) Legislate to make it a lawful requirement that it is only a binding vote of the public majority that can determine whether public assets held at NZ central or local government are sold, or long-term leased via Public-Private-Partnerships.
16) Legislate to make it unlawful for politicians to knowingly misrepresent their policies prior to central or local government elections.
17. Legislate to protect individuals, NGOs, and community-based organisations, who are ‘whistle-blowing’ against ‘conflicts of interest’ and alleged corrupt practices at central and local government level and within the judiciary.
18) Legislate to prevent ‘State Capture’ – where vested interests get what they want, at the ‘policy’ level, before laws are passed which serve their vested interests.
___________________________
Does ANY other candidate in the Mt Albert by-election have such an ‘ACTION PLAN for transparency and democratic accountability’?
If not – perhaps you should consider ‘being BOLD – vote BRIGHT’?
I would like to ask them whether they consider a coalition with National a possibility, sometime in the future, and what it would take. If the answer is negative, and assuming their answer is not similar to Bertrand Russell’s reply to Sir Oswald Mosley, which could be considered somewhat hypocritical under the current circumstances, I’d be very interested to find out why not. This is a genuine question BTW.
Well, that seems like an evenhanded, well researched article. Indeed the only shortcoming it has is failing to note that the cgi began the winding up process three months before the election result that supposedly dried up donations. Other than that, it’s Pulitzer material /sarc
I see that Kellyanne Conway was once an “adjunct professor at George Washington University Law Center.”
HOW?!???!? It’s more than obvious every time Conway comes on television that she is clueless. Perhaps she was appointed by the same corporate headhunting geniuses that led to Saatchi’s idiotic Grand Dragon Kevin Roberts being given a chair at Oxford University and ACT’s braindead ex-führer Jamie “Lock Up His Sisters” Whyte becoming a lecturer at Oxford.
Heh. Trump might actually be putting lobbyists out of work. Seems it might work better to buy ads on the TV shows he watches. So advertising rates are going up.
Talking about what she saw in Syria – I rather enjoyed it. 8.09 min. long. Except for her inability to talk about Islamic minority sects. And completely not talking about Rojava.
Tulsi Gabbard rocks btw. Been following bits and pieces by her (some interviews on CNN etc where she leaves interviewers stumped). Taking a proposition to the house calling for an end to arming groups in Syria (Stop Arming Terrorists Act)
As for the interview you link…yet again a wholly independent person/journalist relays the same basic story as every other independent journalist/person who’s saying anything about Syria – and it flat stick contradicts the line we’ve been fed every night and every day on the TV and in newspapers. What. A. Fucking. Surprise.
edit – very late edit to dump a few Gabbard interview links. The first is on her ‘Stop Arming Terrorist Bill and her meeting with Trump. (less than 5 min) and the second an idiot from CNN questioning her on her visit to Syria (2 min) and a third from CNN
Yep ,all good, Andrew seems to me to have lightened up a lot since the last pm fled.–a cheeky grin on his chops methinks on occasion. Steady hand at the helm,
Poto Williams sets out the issues regarding Jackson,
Kia orana
As the Labour Party Spokesperson for Family and Sexual Violence, I am concerned that Willie Jackson is becoming a Labour Party candidate with a prominent ranking on the list.
White Ribbon encourages everyone to break the silence around domestic violence by challenging comments and actions that are abusive or condone abuse. I was a vocal opponent of Mr Jackson’s comments during the ‘Roast-Busters’ incident and I do not believe that his attitude towards victims of sexual abuse match what I expect of a member of the Labour Party. Especially a member of our caucus.
I appreciate that Mr Jackson may regret his comments, but I am yet to hear that he understands his attitudes and views are highly offensive to many New Zealanswrs. I’m yet to hear that he wishes to work on putting that right and apologise for his behaviour.
Violence is not just physical, but also covers emotional and verbal abuse. Not speaking out against abuse of any kind is condoning or tacitly endorsing that behaviour. The comments Mr Jackson made around the ‘Roast-Busters’ incident are never OK, but it is OK to ask for help.
White Ribbon calls for us to support people who wish to change their abusive behaviour, so I welcome the opportunity to support Mr Jackson in apologising and making those changes.
Until then, as someone who speaks for the victims of family and sexual violence, and as a survivor of such abuse, I can not in good conscience support him as my colleague.
–ENDS–
From Umm al-Hiran to Amona, the comparison shrieked to the skies: apartheid police. One police for whites and one police for natives.
by GIDEON LEVY, Haaretz, Feb. 2, 2017
Once, I moved house. It was sad. It was sad to part from the walls and the memories. The sorrow passed. I got over it. I am not alone: A lot of people have moved home, some because they wanted to, others not: because of a contract that expired, a relationship that fell apart or a new job.
It’s always sad to leave home, though not every such departure features (ostensibly) heart-wrenching articles, phony assertions, utterly incredible cries for national compassion and scandalous compensation. It doesn’t always take eight Israeli army battalions and 3,000 policemen to move a person from what had been his home.
On second thoughts, I never lived in a stolen home. Maybe leaving it is harder.
On Wednesday the Amona Show arrived at its last act. More than anything else, the illegal outpost’s evacuation proved how racist the Israeli police are. It seems that people can be evacuated using bare hands, without need for rifles or helmets, without truncheons and mainly, without the discourtesy and penchant for violence that the police and border police have demonstrated when facing the weak, Arabs or Ethiopians. Suddenly the demonstrators are not shot with live fire. It was not the police who swept into Amona, but “Salvation Army” soldiers in blue jackets with an Israeli flag sewn to the sleeve.
Why? Because the evacuees are white Jews, representatives of the most privileged, most powerful group in Israeli society. Because the chief of police hails from the same neighborhood. Because the government didn’t want heart-rending pictures to start making the rounds.
From Umm al-Hiran to Amona, the comparison shrieked to the skies: apartheid police. One police for whites and one police for natives. It can no longer be denied.
The evacuation of Amona proceeded after foreplay that dragged on and on, including the usual repertoire of schticks, featuring endless hearings in the High Court of Justice, sitting as an especially incongruous Purim-costumed version of a state with justice and equality before the law, including the justices playing dumb, the young girls in braids and tears, the young mothers with babies, the guitars, the prayers, candles and all that tired jazz. The cries of “wickedness” and “discrimination” and “Citizens type B,” the little girl asking her mother, in front of rolling cameras of course, “Mommy, will we have somewhere to live?” as though she didn’t know the answer.
The army that cordons off the area but allows hundreds of youngsters to freely infiltrate, barricading themselves inside homes while vowing to eschew violence; the soldiers demonstrating their sensitivity as they prepare for action – any moment now they’ll be bursting into tears; the nauseating headlines – “This was my home,” “The final hours”; the Palestinian landowners for whose benefit this show has been put on, who will never be allowed to get anywhere near their land, now evacuated; the childish name chosen for this mission – “Locked kindergarten” [from the song based on Rachel’s poem, “It’s not nice to see the kindergarten locked”] – how very poetic and moving. And, of course, the appropriate Zionist reaction, without which no eviction could possibly proceed – build another 1,000 housing units, and counting.
I look forward to the (?) post, which I don’t want to pre-empt in any way. However, I felt something was missing from the bits & pieces that I did read, which is why & how images, for example, can be so powerful, and if this understanding can help us harnessing this power as it were.
My premise is that the brain is processing written or spoken (i.e. radio) text differently from visual content. The following article is quite light-weight but it covers this difference reasonably well – ironically it was written by somebody with a degree in journalism:
It also has been said that body language and facial expressions, i.e. mostly but not limited to visual keys, plays a bigger part in our communication than the verbal part. It appears to be less precise than verbal communication but possibly more effective and efficient in conveying and inducing emotions.
Art, particularly visual art, almost without exception invokes emotions in each and every normal (…) human being. It hits you between the eyes, literally, without the need to be first deconstructed and then deconstructed such as is the case with reading literature, for example – the latter takes time (and effort).
As one saying goes, more or less: a picture speaks a thousand words.
Art, like no other, stimulates the imagination and easily crosses boundaries between fact and fiction or fantasy.
The Arts, therefore, must be an important part of children’s education so that they learn to ‘read’ their own but also others’ emotions and to integrate these, for want of a better word, with their more rational and critical thinking and discerning reality and truth.
In my view, this does not necessarily mean that children should be taught to critically look at imagery or videos, or (forensically) analyse the medium, because this requires a lot of ‘back-tracking’ in and by the brain whilst the non-verbal ‘message’ has already long taken hold in and of our brain circuits. Apart from the fact-checking and all that I suggest that it would be good to ask how did it make you feel and how did it change your thinking about the topic or subject of the particular visual content. In other words, be aware of the effects on ourselves more than anything else. And then ask ourselves whether we’re happy with those effects on who we are and (have) become due to watching the material, absorbing it.
Anyway, these are the kind of ideas that I’ve been toying with and applying to and on myself with a few interesting introspective results and I also wondered how I would have been in the here & now if I had learned some of these things as a kid – a silly question, I know.
Philosopher Slavoj Zizek has critiqued the liberal culturalisation of politics in the form of identity politics. He argues that the culturalist concept of “tolerance” and “respect” is wholly inadequate in dealing with questions of oppression:
“…I’m opposed to this notion [tolerance]. Of course I’m not for intolerance towards foreigners, for anti-feminism, and so on. What I am against is the perception, which is moralist-automatic, of racism as a problem of tolerance. For Martin Luther King one doesn’t fight racism with tolerance, but with emancipatory political struggle, even armed struggle. So, why are so many problems of today perceived as problems of intolerance, rather than problems of inequality, exploitation, injustice? Racism is a problem. But to perceive racism as a problem of tolerance, it’s not automatic. In this innocent shift of perspective, there is ideology. Why? I claim the reason is the liberal multiculturalist basic ideological operation, the, let’s call it, the culturalisation of politics….”
Identity politics is yesterdays story, That style of politics has led the left to utter defeat everywhere. It is discredited and has been showed to have no electoral constituency. The primacy of class is again the organising bedrock of the left, not gender or identity.
[“I am completely uninterested in your gender politics.” And I am completely uninterested in you derailing this post with anti-feminist politics. Stay out of this thread from now on – weka]
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
I don’t think that quote or link says exactly what you say it does.
I’m opposed to this notion [tolerance].
Actually many anti-racist and feminists say the same. To say a woman or brown person is “tolerated”, is not the same as saying they are respected by the society and treated as equals. It kind of says people put up with them.
And then the quote goes on:
For Martin Luther King one doesn’t fight racism with tolerance, but with emancipatory political struggle, even armed struggle. So, why are so many problems of today perceived as problems of intolerance, rather than problems of inequality, exploitation, injustice?
Basically it’s saying that racism should be fought as part of an emancipatory political struggle
The link says there is a place for anti-racism and feminism within class politics, but that class is the fundamental problem with capitalism:
Socialists do not reduce questions of homophobia and gender inequality to questions of class. However, socialists do locate the source of various oppressions within the framework of capitalist class relations. For example, Marxists give a radical materialist explanation of women’s oppression and homophobia that goes a beyond simple liberal analysis. Such an analysis also leads to radical emancipatory solutions for the majority of people who suffer under our society.
The continuation of gay, women and Maori oppression in New Zealand is very much related to questions of class and capitalism.
In fact, your citations provide arguments AGAINST your stated views.
What to do on a Sunday after you’ve won an election on a promise to take govt away from the elites and give it back to the people? Headline a Versailles themed ball for European royalty of course! Photos.
“The event “From Vienna to Versailles,” took place Saturday night at the Mar-a-Lago Club, which was done up in Old World 18th-century style, right down to the service staff in powdered wigs and satin knee breeches or Marie Antoinette dresses.
“Yes,” said one server, when asked if the wig was hot. “And it weighs four pounds.”
The night began with the diplomatic receiving line and cocktails around the balustraded pool, a fireworks display over the Intracoastal which gave the smattering of protesters the best views, and classical music by Hapzburg-costumed musicians.
After cocktails, the crowd moved to the Grand Ballroom — conceived and constructed to look like Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors, making it the perfect foil for the gold-rimmed china and snow-white table linens and mounds of all-white flowers…”
Yes let’s all pretend we’re filthy rich aristocrats, re-enacting a scene that has come to epitomize out of touch elitism and obscene decadence, and having a merry time while throwing some bones or cake perhaps at the poor. Oh wait who’s pretending haha!
New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. ...
The ‘50 Shades of Green’ farmers’ protest in 2019 was heavy on climate change denial, but five years on, scepticism and criticism about the idea that pine forests can save us is growing across the board. File photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate ...
This morning the sky was bright.The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.Their calls are clear and beautiful.Just some random thoughts:MāoriPaul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises ...
In 2003, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, ruling that Māori customary title over the foreshore and seabed had not been universally extinguished, and that the Māori Land Court could determine claims and confirm title if the facts supported it. This kicked off the ...
Earlier this week at Parliament, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was applauded for saying that the response to the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care had to be “bigger than politics.” True, but the fine words, apologies and “we hear you” messages will soon ring ...
TL;DR: In news breaking this morning:The Ministry of Education is cutting $2 billion from its school building programme so the National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government has enough money to deliver tax cuts; The Government has quietly lowered its child poverty reduction targets to make them easier to achieve;Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ’s ...
Kia ora. These are some stories that caught our eye this week – as always, feel free to share yours in the comments. Our header image this week (via Eke Panuku) shows the planned upgrade for the Karanga Plaza Tidal Swimming Steps. The week in Greater Auckland On ...
1. What's not to love about the way the Harris campaign is turning things around?a. Nothingb. Love all of itc. God what a reliefd. Not that it will be by any means easye. All of the above 2. Documents released by the Ministry of Health show Associate Health Minister Casey ...
Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking about the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Carereport released this week, and with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on a UN push to not recognise carbon offset markets and ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced$802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...
The northern expressway extension from Warkworth to Whangarei is likely to require radical changes to legislation if it is going to be built within the foreseeable future. The Government’s powers to purchase land, the planning process and current restrictions on road tolling are all going to need to be changed ...
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFirst they came for the doctors But I was confused by the numbers and costs So I didn't speak up Then they came for our police and nurses And I didn't think we could afford those costs anyway So I ...
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent talking about the National-ACT-NZ First Government’s release of its first Emissions Reduction Plan;University of Otago Foreign Relations Professor and special guest Dr Karin von ...
Open access notablesImproving global temperature datasets to better account for non-uniform warming, Calvert, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society:To better account for spatial non-uniform trends in warming, a new GITD [global instrumental temperature dataset] was created that used maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) to combine the land surface ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babu’s humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The 2022 election brought the “teal wave” into parliament. The next election will test whether teals, who occupy what were Liberal seats, and other independents can maintain their momentum. Joining us on the Podcast ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide Pixavri/Shutterstock A major Federal Court class action has been dismissed this week after Justice Michael Lee ruled there was not enough evidence to prove the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer. Plaintiff Kelvin ...
In The Week in Politics: politicians have to decide what to do about child abuse, Health NZ is booked in for major surgery and Darleen Tana returns. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman – specifically a woman of colour, Vice President Kamala ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Bennett, PhD Student, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University Last week, a drone delivery company called Wing (owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet) started operating in Melbourne. Some 250,000 residents in parts of the city’s eastern suburbs can now order food from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Foo, Lecturer, Physiotherapy, Monash University pikselstock/Shutterstock In the next 40 years in Australia, it’s predicted the number of Australians aged 65 and over will more than double, while the number of people aged 85 and over will more than triple. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Grant, Research Associate, Power Institute for Arts and Visual Culture, University of Sydney Jonas Åkerström’s 1790 work, Session of the Accademia dell’Arcadia on August 17 1788.Nationalmuseum/Cecilia Heisser Ever wondered whether you’d have a better chance at winning an Olympic gold ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Jones, Program Lead, Food Governance, George Institute for Global Health wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock On Thursday, Australian and New Zealand food ministers at state, federal and national levels met to thrash out what’s next for health star ratings on packaged foods. Now, after ...
The Abuse in Care report found many Pacific survivors lost their connections to their culture and language, resulting in trauma that has been carried from generation to generation. ...
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because it’s not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...
Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori invites the current government to work in partnership with them to develop a pathway forward, including the development of a parallel pathway and meaningful policy and strategy for Kura Kaupapa Māori ...
If you haven’t started watching yet, Tara Ward begs you to reconsider. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. In the world of New Zealand reality television, we have many gems in our crown. There’s the delicious second season of the Celebrity Treasure ...
A new poem by Fiona Kidman. The clothes of the dead I did not keep my mother’s furry red beret for long nor the stringy scarves that adorned the necks of my aunts, although I have kept tag ends of gold, the rings and trinkets they wore, the brooches no ...
The government’s announcement that it will re-open the foreshore and seabed controversy by changing the rules on recognising centuries-old Māori customary title for a third time goes against the rule of law and New Zealand values,” Mr Tipa says. ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $25) Roarrrr! Perkins’ brilliant, award-winning, Marian-Keyes anointed, darkly funny, long ...
The 2004 Act vested ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the Crown, extinguishing any Māori claims to ownership and causing widespread outrage and protests among Māori communities. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antje Deckert, Associate Professor (Criminology), Auckland University of Technology Getty Images Despite the connection between institutional harm and gang membership made clear in this week’s mammoth royal commission abuse-in care report, the government seems unlikely to soften its “get tough on ...
From Lewis Clareburt in the swimming to the start of the rowing – the first seven days of Paris 2024 promise to be big for New Zealand. There are few events that bring the country together quite like an Olympic Games. Nothing quite matches the excitement of getting up in ...
Groundbreaking local science just showed up in the most surprising of places: the season finale of The Kardashians. In the season five finale of The Kardashians last night, several members of the family gathered together in one of their signature empty, cream-coloured rooms to hear test results that had been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University The Middle East is on the brink of a possibly devastating regional war, with hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah reaching an extremely dangerous level. Washington has engaged in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Elizabeth Eades, Rheumatologist, Monash University Lupus is an inflammatory autoimmune illness, where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks itself. Lupus can affect virtually any part of the body, although it most commonly affects the skin, joints and kidneys. The symptoms ...
A law firm that specialises in working with survivors of abuse in State care is disappointed that the Government fails to recognise that its boot camps can be directly compared to previous boot camps from the 1990s and 2000s. ...
Dying is a natural part of life, like updating your Wof or seeing your hairdresser, but without the word-of-mouth recs that help guarantee a good service. What if we changed that? Dying Reviews received by The Spinoff have had the names of organisations redacted while Hospice NZ collects further data. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Mike Lewinski/Flickr, CC BY On any clear night, if you gaze skywards long enough, chances are you’ll see a meteor streaking through the sky. Some nights, however, are better than others. At ...
Despite having no bars or other designated spaces for lesbians, Auckland boasts a small but mighty lesbian museum. So how did it get here? The past 18 months has brought increasing hostility towards the queer community across Aotearoa. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s anti-trans rally in Tamaki Makaurau last March led to a ...
Poneke Antifascist Coalition has invited Wellingtonians to stand in solidarity with the Kanak people at 12pm today outside the French Embassy in Wellington. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Layton, Visiting Fellow, Strategic Studies, Griffith University Drones are the signature technology of the Ukraine war. A few miniature aircraft designs were used in the war’s early days, but an incredible array of drones have now evolved. There are different types, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Slee, Associate Professor, Clinical Academic Neurologist, Flinders University Francisco Gonzelez/Unsplash Migraine is many things, but one thing it’s not is “just a headache”. “Migraine” comes from the Greek word “hemicrania”, referring to the common experience of migraine being predominantly ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lee White, Senior Lecturer and Horizon Fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney Australia was slow to introduce minimum building standards for energy efficiency. The Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) only came into force in 2003. Older homes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Sherwood, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney The past century of human-induced warming has increased rainfall variability over 75% of the Earth’s land area – particularly over Australia, Europe and eastern North America, new research shows. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Heynen, Program Coordinator, Sustainable Energy, The University of Queensland A temporary stadium in the Champ-de-Mars, ParisEkaterina Pokrovsky/Shutterstock As Paris prepares to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the sustainability of the event is coming under scrutiny. The organisers have promoted ...
A night of karaoke and community in a pub that feels like a memory. You’d barely even notice it, unless you knew to look. Tucked away behind a liquor store on busy Constable Street is the capital’s last great pub. Newtown Sports Bar is an emblem of the pub culture ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Wright, Professor in Marine Geology, University of Canterbury Louise Corcoran/Getty Images The decline in the number of doctoral candidates at New Zealand universities is a worrying sign for the country’s effort to build a knowledge-based economy. Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laurie Berg, Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney defotoberg/Shutterstock Migrant worker exploitation is entrenched in workplaces across Australia. Tragically, a deep fear of immigration consequences means most unlawful employer conduct goes unreported. On Wednesday, however, the government officially launched a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vaughan Cruickshank, Senior Lecturer in Health and Physical Education, University of Tasmania Paris is about to host its third summer Olympics. While we don’t yet know what the legacy of this year’s games will be, let’s take the opportunity to reflect on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Breakey, Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, Griffith University In the wake of the assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump, there were calls from bothsides of US politics, as well as internationally, to reduce the brutal, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keith Rathbone, Senior Lecturer, Modern European History and Sports History, Macquarie University Two high-profile assaults on Australians in Paris have raised concerns about security ahead of the Olympic Games. On Saturday evening, a young woman was allegedly sexually assaulted by a ...
Dying is inevitable and, so it seems, is it costing a lot, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in today’s extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.The cost of dying ...
The government took Joyce Harris's first baby and sent her off to a girls' home. Half a century on - and out of oceans of hurt - it asked her to be a mother figure. ...
It’s the deadliest fictional town in the country, but which death has been the most bonkers? Alex Casey looks back at 10 seasons of The Brokenwood Mysteries to find out. Warning: The following ranking story contains famous New Zealand actors appearing to be dead (not alive). The Spinoff has been ...
Water cremation is the biggest thing to happen to the death industry in the last 100 years. Alex Casey meets the people trying to bring it to Aotearoa. Through a set of mirrored doors down the industrial end of Christchurch’s St Asaph Street, death is getting a new lease on ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A,DIV,A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Friday 26 July appeared first on Newsroom. ...
“The whole towns talking about the jones boy”
Curwin Ares Rolinson, NZ First member, Daily Blog blogger, says NEVER; and claims many NZF members say the same.
Says that boy does not have NZF values.
I’d agree that he doesn’t. He has National Party values, i.e, none at all.
Damning indictment of Jones (well done).
“We can but hope that Democracy in New Zealand First wins out.”
Sorry Curwen, but if you have to petition the Board of Directors of your party not to stand a candidate in order to protect the party, you don’t have a democracy.
Anyone know why this is considered a watershed year for NZF?
It seems to me that NZF has often enough hit the dart board in and then near the centre and that has been enough plus winsome, witty, doughty Winnie to keep NZF in the limelight and provide alternatives to the other options. He keeps on though getting older, to have appeal to many.
It seems that Shane Jones will have an appeal also particularly to those who like to talk in everyday language not political fancy talk and exude manliness in a regular blokey way. He could take NZFirst on from Winnie where otherwise it would just collapse without him, like a worn-out balloon. And his values would stand up to scrutiny probably more than most other pollies.
“And his values would stand up to scrutiny probably more than most other pollies.”
Did you read the linked post? Curwen Ares Rolinson, a NZF activist, is basically saying that not only are Jones’ values not compatible with NZF, but that he lacks the degree of integrity required to be an NZF MP (I disagree on that one, but only because Peters’ integrity fluctuates with the breeze. Hmm, maybe Jones is a good fit after all).
(as an aside, I’ve been releasing your comments from Spam. Might be good to get that issue sorted before the book club).
Okay I take your point but often values talk does not match reality. As you say Winston’s can alter. They can even take on a different light from morning to evening.
Sorry about that, but may not succeed before the 12th and after that the task will be mainly off site till the discussion won’t it? I am hoping to get a new computer fairly soon. But I got some advice from you which I have put in my notes and I think one was to look at my cookies. But I have a matter coming up in the next few days that I must concentrate on. So thanks for your help at present and I’ll try to get improved sooner than later.
All good 🙂
The argument to increase taxes on top income earners, and particularly to increase taxes on income from capital.
http://www.salon.com/2017/02/04/it-is-time-to-take-americas-billionaire-class-head-on_partner/
The article links a paper from the Congressional Research Service (non-partisan government body to provide factual information to Congress) that concludes that tax on capital gains income and dividends really needs to go up. Note that in New Zealand, income from capital gains is untaxed, and dividend income from company profit is only taxed once (often at a lower rate than earned income), whereas in the US the company pays tax on profit, then the recipient of dividends paid from that profit also pays income tax on it a second time.
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42043.pdf
Both items are heavy going, but it’s worth chewing through them.
Haven’t time to read it, but would just like to reply to the notion of increasing taxes on income from capital. As a non-home owner, with a little savings in the bank, I pay tax every year on the interest gained.
I think that savers probably have their/our “capital” taxed more than home owner’s get taxed on the rising value of their homes, and probably more than business profits.
Yep. Regular people have interest from small bank deposits and get stung for taxes at their top rate on it. The really wealthy don’t much bother with bank deposits, and put their capital into other things that , surprise surprise, are taxed at lower rates or not at all.
It’s those other things that need to be taxed more.
On the flip side, people should have access to savings for when things go wrong. Savings should be encouraged. In Uk they have an ISA system so that people can save a certain amount per year tax free.
This is especially important when people’s jobs are so transient now and it is so easy to lose your job, have a family or health emergency and in the age of self employment.
https://www.gov.uk/individual-savings-accounts/overview
One of the advantages of Clark was that even though she was a neoliberal she bought in Kiwisaver, working for families, interest free student loans, buying back state assets like Kiwirail, supported the arts more.
Since she’s left, Labour’s policy appears to be lets charge the everyone (especially middle NZ) more to keep a lesser version of what we already have.
There needs to actually be a policy to help the majority of people! Sometimes it feels like there is just an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff and there are more and more people needing that ambulance.
Too much stick, zero carrot. It’s not popular.
I think that Labour is changing though and will lead the next government.
I’d like to see a referendum on UBI too. That is what could really change things in NZ away from the ambulance at bottom of cliff policy.
Gawd we need some sort of government guarantee for ordinary people’s simple savings accounts. Pretty much every other developed country has one.
We do have and we shouldn’t. If people want to take risks with their money then they should stand to lose when the risk calls due.
@ Andre – +100 “Gawd we need some sort of government guarantee for ordinary people’s simple savings accounts. Pretty much every other developed country has one.”
I think Greens have this as policy, does Labour???
It is disgraceful that our money is not safe in banks.
When you loan someone money you’re taking the risk that you’re not going to get it back.
That applies when you put you money in a bank as well.
The only time that it wouldn’t apply is a state bank that paid zero interest, didn’t charge fees and was supported through general taxation. That state bank would also be the sole owner and maintainer of the electronic payments system as well.
I agree New Zealand is lacking incentives to save – Kiwisaver being the only program aimed at retirement. I’d like to see something added to help ordinary people build and hold some kind of emergency fund.
The US has a whole zoo’s worth of different plans, 401k (a bit like Kiwisaver), Individual Retirement Accounts (money goes in pre-tax, grows tax-exempt, taxed on withdrawal after retirement), 529 (saving for your kids’ college), medical expenses accounts etc etc. I wouldn’t like to see NZ go down that path, it’s too much of a mess.
Retirement, education, health, accidents – none of these should need to be saved for as the state should support people through them.
The only reasons I can think of for saving is to buy something or to replace something which really comes down to the same reason.
Great point save nz. Whether inflation is low and therefore low interest, or higher and then higher interest, taxing interest on savings is robbing the saver of part of their capital which should remain intact to limit the erosion of its value and spending power by the inevitable rising prices in the market even when there is low inflation and which are caused by a variety of circumstances.
In NZ the deterioration in value of savings is particularly affected at present by the mostly unmeasured inflation coming from the costs of owning or renting housing.
Don’t worry John Key will provide for you Andre with his zero tax havens if you are non resident in NZ.
As far as I can tell, the NZ tax haven laws don’t actually (legally) help US citizens or tax residents avoid US taxes. Anyone answerable to the US IRD that’s hiding income via NZ would be guilty of illegal evasion, not “legitimate avoidance”.
It’s a different story for other countries though.
But due to the lack of transparency – nobody would ever be able to find out if you were evading taxes, as the real directors do not need to be disclosed in JK’s NZ tax havens.
Yeah, but then they’re tax evaders. Actual criminals risking jail time. That’s how they put away Al Capone in the end. The US IRS is a bit more enthusiastic about tossing big noters in the slammer for not coughing up than the paper tigers here.
Only here in NZ it seems if you know the right people everything is ok. That was one of the revolting things coming out of Panama papers – how many politicians and corporations felt they needed tax havens to hide their slushy funds.
Avoiding double taxation is generally both logical and sensible. I’m surprised it is not the case in US.
That’s quite a philosophical debate in it’s own right.
It could be argued that being able to receive passive income simply from owning a partial stake in a company is so strongly dependent on the laws and basic fairness of an orderly society that it’s totally fair that the company contributes a share and the individual contributes another share to maintaining that society.
Only some companies are not fair and our and international laws don’t provide for companies having to maintain society. AKA Peter Thiel’s investment in NZ – did he have to pay 28% company tax and 33% income tax on his 10+ million ‘windfall’ from the tax payer – or did he pay zero/minimal tax and make a killing that should have been for the public purse?
I don’t know the exact details of Thiel’s investment. So everything in this comment is guesswork or speculation. But it appears most of the investment was in Xero. Which hasn’t made a profit nor paid dividends, ever. Yet. So it won’t have paid any company tax.
The increase in value that Thiel is enjoying seems to be purely capital gain. Which doesn’t get taxed in New Zealand (unless it’s in a short-term trading scenario). So as far as I can tell, the only benefit New Zealand’s VIF got from getting tied up with Valar was getting a small amount of effectively interest when Valar bought out VIF’s stake. So Valar really did manage to privatize the capital gain, but if there had been losses they would have been socialised.
I’ve got no idea how Valar is structured with respect to US taxes. But I’ll take a guess that if it’s a US company it’s probably structured as some sort of partnership, in which case the company doesn’t pay tax because the profits are passed straight through to the partners. I’ll guess the transactions would also be structured so they are capital gains rather than trading income, since capital gains are taxed at a lower rate in the US.
Note though that so far it all appears to be paper gains. No actual income or profit will happen until Valar sells some of it’s holdings.
Make the corporations pay their share ………….. and it’s approx $10 Billion in extra revenue for the Govt ……. every year.
As a bonus if you can stop the corruption of the accountants, lawyers and banks in our ‘developed’ western societies …you will eliminate poverty …. stop wars …….. be able to do something about deforestation etc etc etc
Its our own bent corrupt criminal s ……………. the Keys, Cameron s and other greed driven types who enable worldwide exploitation and inhumanity http://ctj.org/ctjreports/2016/10/offshore_shell_games_2016.php#.WJaVFleY7Mg
worth thinking about
“In January of 1962, Russell received a series of letters from an unlikely correspondent — Sir Oswald Mosley, who had founded the British Union of Fascists thirty years earlier. Mosley was inviting — or, rather, provoking — Russell to engage in a debate, in which he could persuade the moral philosopher of the merits of fascism. Russell’s considered and morally unflinching response, included in Ronald Clark’s excellent biography The Life of Bertrand Russell (public library), stands as a manifesto for the right not to engage in a debate with a counterpart so morally misaligned with oneself as to guarantee not only the self-defeating futility of such engagement but its detrimental cost to one’s own sanity.
Shortly before his 90th birthday, Russell writes:
Dear Sir Oswald,
Thank you for your letter and for your enclosures. I have given some thought to our recent correspondence. It is always difficult to decide on how to respond to people whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repellent to one’s own. It is not that I take exception to the general points made by you but that every ounce of my energy has been devoted to an active opposition to cruel bigotry, compulsive violence, and the sadistic persecution which has characterised the philosophy and practice of fascism.
I feel obliged to say that the emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us.
I should like you to understand the intensity of this conviction on my part. It is not out of any attempt to be rude that I say this but because of all that I value in human experience and human achievement.
Yours sincerely,
Bertrand Russell”
https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/10/06/bertrand-russell-oswald-mosley/
Wow marty mars Russell put his thoughts very cogently into words that resonate across the years being both memorable and entirely valid. Thanks for that.
Labour Party MPs breakfast at Phil Twyford’s this morning. Michael Wood and others rock up at 07:00! What would you like them to be chatting about over their coffee? Electorate issues or wider ones?
http://methodistnorth.org.nz/soup-soul-te-atatu-union/
http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/87890357/Auckland-house-fire-reveals-suspected-clandestine-lab
http://insights.nzherald.co.nz/article/new-zealand-burglary-map
Some context – Alfred Ngaro, Tau Henare, Penny Hulse and numerous others live in Te Atatu – a once ordinary area that now seems plagued by crime, P and burglaries.
Remember this?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11794001
What would you like them to be chatting about over their coffee?
Offering an alternative to Neo-liberalism.
Do Labour support transparency in the spending of public monies on private consultants and contractors (at both local and central government level)?
Do Labour agree that the following information on awarded contracts should be made available for public scrutiny?
* The unique contract number.
* The name of the consultant or contractor.
* A brief description of the scope of the contract.
* The contract start and finish dates.
* The exact dollar value of every contract, including those sub-contracted.
* How the contract was awarded – by direct appointment or public tender.
If Labour do support such transparency in the spending of public monies on private sector consultants and contractors – what are they DOING about it?
(I’ll be addressing the Board of Auckland Transport on 16 February 2017 on this matter.)
‘Activists – get things done.’
Penny Bright
‘Anti-privatisation / anti-corruption campaigner.’
2017 Independent candidate
Mt Albert by-election.
Are Labour supporting directly-affected State tenant Niki Rauti in her fight against eviction and the privatisation of State housing in Glen Innes?
I am.
Penny Bright
‘Anti-privatisation / anti-corruption
campaigner’.
2017 Independent candidate
Mt Albert by-election.
Does Labour have such an
“ACTION PLAN TO ENSURE ‘OPEN, TRANSPARENT AND DEMOCRATICALLY ACCOUNTABLE’ NZ GOVERNMENT AND JUDICIARY”?
1) Make ALL ‘facilitation payments’ illegal.
2) Legislate to create an NZ independent anti-corruption body, tasked with educating the public and preventing corruption.
3) Legislate for NZ Members of Parliament (who make the laws for everyone else) to have a legally enforceable ‘Code of Conduct’.
4) Make it an offence under the Local Government Act 2002, for NZ local government elected representatives to breach their ‘Code of Conduct’.
5) Make it a lawful, mandatory requirement for Local Government elected representatives to complete a ‘Register of Interests’ which is available for public scrutiny.
6) Make it a lawful, mandatory requirement for Local Government staff, responsible for property or procurement, to complete a ‘Register of Interests’ which is available for public scrutiny.
7) Make it a lawful, mandatory requirement for Local Government Council Controlled Organisation (CCO)) Directors and staff, staff, responsible for property or procurement, to complete a ‘Register of Interests’ which is available for public scrutiny.
8) Fully implement and enforce the Public Records Act 2005, to ensure public records are available for public scrutiny.
9) Make it a lawful requirement that that a ‘cost-benefit analysis’ of NZ Central Government and Local Government must be undertaken, to prove that private procurement of public services previously provided ‘in-house’ is cost-effective for the majority of taxpayers and ratepayers.
10) Legislate for a legally enforceable ‘Code of Conduct’ for members of the NZ Judiciary, to ensure they are not ‘above the law’.
11) Legislate to provide a publicly-available NZ Judicial ‘Register of Interests’, to help prevent ‘conflicts of interest’.
12) Ensure ALL Court proceedings are recorded, with audio records available to parties who request them.
13) Legislate for a publicly-available NZ ‘Register of Lobbyists’ and ‘Code of Conduct’ for lobbyists.
14) Legislate for a ‘post-separation employment’ (‘revolving door’) quarantine period from the time public officials leave the public service, to take up a similar role in the private sector.
15) Legislate to make it a lawful requirement that it is only a binding vote of the public majority that can determine whether public assets held at NZ central or local government are sold, or long-term leased via Public-Private-Partnerships.
16) Legislate to make it unlawful for politicians to knowingly misrepresent their policies prior to central or local government elections.
17. Legislate to protect individuals, NGOs, and community-based organisations, who are ‘whistle-blowing’ against ‘conflicts of interest’ and alleged corrupt practices at central and local government level and within the judiciary.
18) Legislate to prevent ‘State Capture’ – where vested interests get what they want, at the ‘policy’ level, before laws are passed which serve their vested interests.
___________________________
Does ANY other candidate in the Mt Albert by-election have such an ‘ACTION PLAN for transparency and democratic accountability’?
If not – perhaps you should consider ‘being BOLD – vote BRIGHT’?
🙂
Penny Bright
2017 Independent candidate
Mt Albert by-election.
Their imminent retirement from politics 👿
I would like to ask them whether they consider a coalition with National a possibility, sometime in the future, and what it would take. If the answer is negative, and assuming their answer is not similar to Bertrand Russell’s reply to Sir Oswald Mosley, which could be considered somewhat hypocritical under the current circumstances, I’d be very interested to find out why not. This is a genuine question BTW.
Be good to see more policy on food waste in NZ. I think things are happening but not on a large scale or with any consistancy.
From the US
“Garbage Food: Climate change may be a political hot button, but a big driver of it — food waste — is a bipartisan target
Finally, an environmental initiative everyone agrees on — big business and tech startups, science and churches”
http://www.salon.com/2017/02/04/garbage-food-climate-change-may-be-a-political-hot-button-but-a-big-driver-of-it-food-waste-is-a-bipartisan-target/
Down she goes! Staff laid off, donations drying up.
http://investmentwatchblog.com/clinton-foundation-on-the-brink-of-collapse/
@AsleepWhileWalking – but where did the missing millions go?
Well, that seems like an evenhanded, well researched article. Indeed the only shortcoming it has is failing to note that the cgi began the winding up process three months before the election result that supposedly dried up donations. Other than that, it’s Pulitzer material /sarc
A real American hero steps up during a dark time
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/04/donald-trump-slams-so-called-judge-blocked-ban-vows-overturn/
Heh. The best explanation yet of Kellyanne Conway.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/denis-leary-hilariously-admits-he-looks-like-kellyanne-conway_us_58947245e4b0c1284f255540
(If you don’t know who Denis Leary is, the link below is a good sample)
https://youtu.be/UrgpZ0fUixs
I see that Kellyanne Conway was once an “adjunct professor at George Washington University Law Center.”
HOW?!???!? It’s more than obvious every time Conway comes on television that she is clueless. Perhaps she was appointed by the same corporate headhunting geniuses that led to Saatchi’s idiotic Grand Dragon Kevin Roberts being given a chair at Oxford University and ACT’s braindead ex-führer Jamie “Lock Up His Sisters” Whyte becoming a lecturer at Oxford.
“Adjunct’ can mean as little as doing an occasional guest lecture. They are not part of the organisation
Even associating one’s name with such an airhead must be detrimental to its reputation, however.
Better explanation of Kellyanne Conway.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3x-u6HXUAAfRy7.jpg
Another piece of corporate welfare that stands a good chance of turning to custard with the ratepayer being the loser ending up with the debt.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/73714349/high-risk-loan-to-irrigation-scheme-passes
Un-F-ing beliveable!
Discussion about the UK welfare state, 1600 to 1840, and its impact on the UK macro economy. References historical research from the Lancet.
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=35284
Heh. Trump might actually be putting lobbyists out of work. Seems it might work better to buy ads on the TV shows he watches. So advertising rates are going up.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-tv-ad-rates-morning-joe-oreilly-234647
WARNING!!! It’s a Syria post, and it’s from RT america.
A interview with Elizabeth Kucinich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Kucinich
Talking about what she saw in Syria – I rather enjoyed it. 8.09 min. long. Except for her inability to talk about Islamic minority sects. And completely not talking about Rojava.
Tulsi Gabbard rocks btw. Been following bits and pieces by her (some interviews on CNN etc where she leaves interviewers stumped). Taking a proposition to the house calling for an end to arming groups in Syria (Stop Arming Terrorists Act)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRtznPEc4RA
Worth google searching her stuff.
As for the interview you link…yet again a wholly independent person/journalist relays the same basic story as every other independent journalist/person who’s saying anything about Syria – and it flat stick contradicts the line we’ve been fed every night and every day on the TV and in newspapers. What. A. Fucking. Surprise.
edit – very late edit to dump a few Gabbard interview links. The first is on her ‘Stop Arming Terrorist Bill and her meeting with Trump. (less than 5 min) and the second an idiot from CNN questioning her on her visit to Syria (2 min) and a third from CNN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWo9PGSKVIw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmRqBcaGCX0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuf_D9NWk2s
Arguments that there are no moderate rebels have been promulgated by Fisk and Cockburn and not widely reported.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n03/patrick-cockburn/who-supplies-the-news
What is not so much is the fraud in investigative claims of contract players and the damage it inflicts .
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2017/feb/02/iraq-human-rights-lawyer-phil-shiner-disqualified-for-professional-misconduct
Where is the warmongering pm and his cohort to denounce these independent journalists?
Eva Bartlett
Elizabeth Kucinich
Vanessa Beeley
Congrats on willy. He will be a great asset
Yep ,all good, Andrew seems to me to have lightened up a lot since the last pm fled.–a cheeky grin on his chops methinks on occasion. Steady hand at the helm,
Who to, National ?
Winston told -“to get off the grass”- in the herald a while ago.–
Poto Williams sets out the issues regarding Jackson,
https://www.facebook.com/poto.williams.7/posts/10208514104110708
Poto could do well to protect his flank.
If Willie doesn’t get the list placing he needs – which on current polling is top 5 – he will go after a Maori seat nomination.
Poto would be one of those facing a major challenge.
Why would Poto be facing a challenge from Willie Jackson?
The last show at Amona
From Umm al-Hiran to Amona, the comparison shrieked to the skies: apartheid police. One police for whites and one police for natives.
by GIDEON LEVY, Haaretz, Feb. 2, 2017
Once, I moved house. It was sad. It was sad to part from the walls and the memories. The sorrow passed. I got over it. I am not alone: A lot of people have moved home, some because they wanted to, others not: because of a contract that expired, a relationship that fell apart or a new job.
It’s always sad to leave home, though not every such departure features (ostensibly) heart-wrenching articles, phony assertions, utterly incredible cries for national compassion and scandalous compensation. It doesn’t always take eight Israeli army battalions and 3,000 policemen to move a person from what had been his home.
On second thoughts, I never lived in a stolen home. Maybe leaving it is harder.
On Wednesday the Amona Show arrived at its last act. More than anything else, the illegal outpost’s evacuation proved how racist the Israeli police are. It seems that people can be evacuated using bare hands, without need for rifles or helmets, without truncheons and mainly, without the discourtesy and penchant for violence that the police and border police have demonstrated when facing the weak, Arabs or Ethiopians. Suddenly the demonstrators are not shot with live fire. It was not the police who swept into Amona, but “Salvation Army” soldiers in blue jackets with an Israeli flag sewn to the sleeve.
Why? Because the evacuees are white Jews, representatives of the most privileged, most powerful group in Israeli society. Because the chief of police hails from the same neighborhood. Because the government didn’t want heart-rending pictures to start making the rounds.
From Umm al-Hiran to Amona, the comparison shrieked to the skies: apartheid police. One police for whites and one police for natives. It can no longer be denied.
The evacuation of Amona proceeded after foreplay that dragged on and on, including the usual repertoire of schticks, featuring endless hearings in the High Court of Justice, sitting as an especially incongruous Purim-costumed version of a state with justice and equality before the law, including the justices playing dumb, the young girls in braids and tears, the young mothers with babies, the guitars, the prayers, candles and all that tired jazz. The cries of “wickedness” and “discrimination” and “Citizens type B,” the little girl asking her mother, in front of rolling cameras of course, “Mommy, will we have somewhere to live?” as though she didn’t know the answer.
The army that cordons off the area but allows hundreds of youngsters to freely infiltrate, barricading themselves inside homes while vowing to eschew violence; the soldiers demonstrating their sensitivity as they prepare for action – any moment now they’ll be bursting into tears; the nauseating headlines – “This was my home,” “The final hours”; the Palestinian landowners for whose benefit this show has been put on, who will never be allowed to get anywhere near their land, now evacuated; the childish name chosen for this mission – “Locked kindergarten” [from the song based on Rachel’s poem, “It’s not nice to see the kindergarten locked”] – how very poetic and moving. And, of course, the appropriate Zionist reaction, without which no eviction could possibly proceed – build another 1,000 housing units, and counting.
Read more…
http://normanfinkelstein.com/2017/02/02/reality-check-5/
I’d like to thank both Bill and Carolyn_nth for drawing attention to Amusing Ourselves to Death.
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-03022017/#comment-1295297
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-04022017/#comment-1295537
I look forward to the (?) post, which I don’t want to pre-empt in any way. However, I felt something was missing from the bits & pieces that I did read, which is why & how images, for example, can be so powerful, and if this understanding can help us harnessing this power as it were.
My premise is that the brain is processing written or spoken (i.e. radio) text differently from visual content. The following article is quite light-weight but it covers this difference reasonably well – ironically it was written by somebody with a degree in journalism:
https://www.eyeqinsights.com/power-visual-content-images-vs-text/
It also has been said that body language and facial expressions, i.e. mostly but not limited to visual keys, plays a bigger part in our communication than the verbal part. It appears to be less precise than verbal communication but possibly more effective and efficient in conveying and inducing emotions.
Art, particularly visual art, almost without exception invokes emotions in each and every normal (…) human being. It hits you between the eyes, literally, without the need to be first deconstructed and then deconstructed such as is the case with reading literature, for example – the latter takes time (and effort).
As one saying goes, more or less: a picture speaks a thousand words.
Art, like no other, stimulates the imagination and easily crosses boundaries between fact and fiction or fantasy.
The Arts, therefore, must be an important part of children’s education so that they learn to ‘read’ their own but also others’ emotions and to integrate these, for want of a better word, with their more rational and critical thinking and discerning reality and truth.
In my view, this does not necessarily mean that children should be taught to critically look at imagery or videos, or (forensically) analyse the medium, because this requires a lot of ‘back-tracking’ in and by the brain whilst the non-verbal ‘message’ has already long taken hold in and of our brain circuits. Apart from the fact-checking and all that I suggest that it would be good to ask how did it make you feel and how did it change your thinking about the topic or subject of the particular visual content. In other words, be aware of the effects on ourselves more than anything else. And then ask ourselves whether we’re happy with those effects on who we are and (have) become due to watching the material, absorbing it.
Anyway, these are the kind of ideas that I’ve been toying with and applying to and on myself with a few interesting introspective results and I also wondered how I would have been in the here & now if I had learned some of these things as a kid – a silly question, I know.
I am completely uninterested in your gender politics.
from http://liberation.typepad.com/liberation/2016/11/john-moore-identity-politics-vs-class-politics-an-anti-establishment-class-analysis.html
Philosopher Slavoj Zizek has critiqued the liberal culturalisation of politics in the form of identity politics. He argues that the culturalist concept of “tolerance” and “respect” is wholly inadequate in dealing with questions of oppression:
“…I’m opposed to this notion [tolerance]. Of course I’m not for intolerance towards foreigners, for anti-feminism, and so on. What I am against is the perception, which is moralist-automatic, of racism as a problem of tolerance. For Martin Luther King one doesn’t fight racism with tolerance, but with emancipatory political struggle, even armed struggle. So, why are so many problems of today perceived as problems of intolerance, rather than problems of inequality, exploitation, injustice? Racism is a problem. But to perceive racism as a problem of tolerance, it’s not automatic. In this innocent shift of perspective, there is ideology. Why? I claim the reason is the liberal multiculturalist basic ideological operation, the, let’s call it, the culturalisation of politics….”
Identity politics is yesterdays story, That style of politics has led the left to utter defeat everywhere. It is discredited and has been showed to have no electoral constituency. The primacy of class is again the organising bedrock of the left, not gender or identity.
[“I am completely uninterested in your gender politics.” And I am completely uninterested in you derailing this post with anti-feminist politics. Stay out of this thread from now on – weka]
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
I don’t think that quote or link says exactly what you say it does.
I’m opposed to this notion [tolerance].
Actually many anti-racist and feminists say the same. To say a woman or brown person is “tolerated”, is not the same as saying they are respected by the society and treated as equals. It kind of says people put up with them.
And then the quote goes on:
For Martin Luther King one doesn’t fight racism with tolerance, but with emancipatory political struggle, even armed struggle. So, why are so many problems of today perceived as problems of intolerance, rather than problems of inequality, exploitation, injustice?
Basically it’s saying that racism should be fought as part of an emancipatory political struggle
The link says there is a place for anti-racism and feminism within class politics, but that class is the fundamental problem with capitalism:
In fact, your citations provide arguments AGAINST your stated views.
What to do on a Sunday after you’ve won an election on a promise to take govt away from the elites and give it back to the people? Headline a Versailles themed ball for European royalty of course! Photos.
“The event “From Vienna to Versailles,” took place Saturday night at the Mar-a-Lago Club, which was done up in Old World 18th-century style, right down to the service staff in powdered wigs and satin knee breeches or Marie Antoinette dresses.
“Yes,” said one server, when asked if the wig was hot. “And it weighs four pounds.”
The night began with the diplomatic receiving line and cocktails around the balustraded pool, a fireworks display over the Intracoastal which gave the smattering of protesters the best views, and classical music by Hapzburg-costumed musicians.
After cocktails, the crowd moved to the Grand Ballroom — conceived and constructed to look like Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors, making it the perfect foil for the gold-rimmed china and snow-white table linens and mounds of all-white flowers…”
Yes let’s all pretend we’re filthy rich aristocrats, re-enacting a scene that has come to epitomize out of touch elitism and obscene decadence, and having a merry time while throwing some bones or cake perhaps at the poor. Oh wait who’s pretending haha!