How far will the bitter and nasty right wing faction of old white men go in their determination to turn everything into another round of culture war?
Well, in the case of Karl Du Fresne (a creeping Jesus if there ever was one) it runs as far as going into bat for child molesters because, you know, white male.
“…Now, Cardinal Pell. Did he sexually molest two choir boys in the sacristy of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne? A jury decided he did, …”
That is f**king right you pathetic piece of shit Du Fresne. he was convicted. By a jury. After a fair trial. But no, you think you should defend him because you are a screaming emotional cripple who clings to the authoritarian catholic church like dung to a blanket and would prefer kiddy fiddlers walk free to conservative white male clerics in positions of authority being held to account.
They will always be with us, the issue is that they have platforms all over the place. Way out of proportion to their actual numbers. We need a means of de-platforming them.
Agreed. Du Frsne’s misplaced sense of being a victimised white male has landed him in a very bad place with this one. He just can’t see what his own retrograde ideology has done to him.
a racist ageist rant I don’t think ethnicity or race are predeterminstic for kiddy fiddlers I think the last big nz case was a Samoan rugby coach Nor does that suggest such activities a predisposed to Polynesians as you are trying to suggest it is a white, make agre problem, looser
Is Netanyahu really “white”?
What is the definition of “white” these days anyway?
I thought the jewish people came from Arabia and eastern med?
Arabia’s not white is it? Nor eastern med?
It is very confusing
Rubbish. All because one group is acting like kneejerk reactionary schoolchildren doesn’t require the other to respond to those self-indulgent wankers. You are demanding response before the considerations are made.
To me, I see one side going ten rounds before the first bell has been rung. They’ll exhaust themselves dancing and prancing round the canvas then, when the debate actually begins, they’ll have nothing new to say.
And they’ll get crucified as the self-interested tax dodging sacks they are (imo).
I don’t think the public remembers the shit these people sprout for months on end. Another scandal, another news cycle, gone in the hot wind it arrived on.
Let’s wait for the actual debate. We’re not all reeds in this wind.
We the Bleeple, I suspect your argument is fatally flawed.
The “self interested tax dodging sacks” are winning the argument currently, and because of that, Peters and NZF will hang the coalition out to dry on this.
By the time the PM has given the NZF required exemptions to farmers, small businesses and the NZX, the money left in the “fairness payments” bucket will be minimal and the Govt wont have $8b to give as income tax breaks. The working poor will feel let down once again.
And without any real money for the “fairness payments” whats the point of the CGT in the first place?
Then the Cullen Tax Group will be written off as Jacindas very expensive vanity project with no gains for anyone (except those on the committee)
Time will tell if your view is the one that comes to pass, or whether my view is the one which comes to pass
Ad,
What makes you think O’Connor will be advocating CGT for farmers? Given the PM’s statements about her concerns for farmers and small business, it will be much more likely that O’Connor will be singing a duo with Peters.
He was on RNZ this morning trying to defend against Natipnal’s inroads in rural communities on tax issues.
Peters will defend similar rural territory at Cabinet, but more harshly. Tax reform at a sectoral level is lost in the provinces and the remaining ground is in Auckland.
But think about the chidren! It has become a cliche’ because so often they and their parents are passed over as the tax parade goes by. A sick joke that refers to the cry so often heard and so little listened to.
Beneficiaries should not be limited in what they can earn. They should’t be checked every week and their benefit adjusted down. Every month okay and encourage it, adjust a little at the end of six months. Reward effort and determination.
Now they may be left with little for their work to spend after tax and removal of benefits and repayment of grants. How about the equivalent of $2 an hour and then transport and extra child care costs taking care of that.
Stick that in your pipes and smoke it you Taxed with Working Group.
National isn’t winning the debate – far from it. Just look at the comments on any stuff article that is anti the CGT and people are mostly all for the CGT. They’re also saying the stuff Labour would want them to say – that it’s not fair to tax income from work different to income from non-work.
Stuff is a left-wing website.
They’re also desperately hoping the government buys them, which is why there are so many articles promoting Ardern and this Labour government.
The ‘average kiwi’ who owns there own home and is not interested in exploiting those who have no option but to rent is going to be better off with the tax adjustments.
The Government are giving the opposition 2 months of rope, and they are doing a very nice job of hanging themselves.
To not pay something on a fortune is hard to do when the theme is “Fairness”
So ordinary people are going… “Wait up.. I pay on every dollar, and they want to pay nothing? Now that’s not fair”
The Right can’t defend the indefensible, so they are losing friends and support.
The Government can come in and suggest serious change in April, which would have seemed impossible before this.
This woman is remarkable. She has made New Zealanders examine “Fairness”
It has opened minds to what have been accepted patterns of behaviour and helped put a new view and perspective on some accepted forms of greed.
Thank you J A. We are seriously considering how some are taxed and some are not and are ready to change that.
But then you get this quick change of tack from the Hosk today over at the fish wrap:
“The soft bigotry of low expectation.” And that is the aspiration of this government, isn’t it? You don’t want to turn up for a work interview? No problem…………………..”
Kat who do you get that from? No Government website. Just yesterday there were 20 newly employed with training in place to plant manuka for the honey industry. This is full time and leading to qualifications, which will assist the next tranche.
The right have always blamed the unemployed. Don’t help them do it. Cheers
They start these lies and hope they will be repeated.
Patricia, you are correct the “fish wrap” is not a govt website, it is however the conveyor of low brow commentary and political bias on a daily basis.
My comment in reply to yours was to highlight your point that while the opposition and its poodles are busy hanging themselves on the rope from the TWG discussion, a quick change of tack in the media, namely from the “fish wrap” appears necessary as a brief diversion.
Soper, Young, etc etc are all far, far to untypical of average New Zealand to have a clue what the public actually think – they are engaged in a giant confidence trick, where being an old, financially secure, white and old of touch person who are convinced that interviewing each other and establishment vested interests is presented as being in touch with the zeitgeist of the nation.
In fact, they just represent narrow sectional interests – and the decline of MSM makes their views of little importance anyway.
However, many on the right have vested interests and these will be examined as the debate proper starts.
Those on the left with large assets (Jones) will have to declare they are not letting those influence their attitudes.
A problem to consider is the fairness of tax on reparations to Maori, however, they seldom sell, so there should be a way through that.
When the Government produces tables showing how large holders of capital will be affected compared to those with basic or no assets, there will be an epiphany.
We are discussing the % of tax paid on earnings from all sources.
A whole industry has been developed to assist the asset rich to avoid tax.
I know they’re irrelevant, but we’re not all trained to think critically or investigate multiple sources. It would be of use to the public to see just how these Nat mouthpieces have self-interest at heart.
P.S. Whatever happened to Swill-Cone? Surely CGT has caused more neurosis to report on.
Unfortunately in most situations those that do live in places in that state would not welcome an order to vacate. With falling available rentals and masses of applicants “You’ll need to find another place” is bleak news for those previously obliged to settle for sub-standard options of that ilk.
Raising the standards of NZ rentals and tapping into a bit of that cash cow milk are great initiatives. I’m concerned that our government are ill prepared for the equal and opposite forces these initiatives will initiate.
I think a trending increase in the number of people that are eligible for and waiting for Government housing is an indication that my fears are not ill-founded.
There are plans afoot to address your concerns Marty. The govt have employed inspectors, they’ve started with the govt housing stock. I think these people will move on to policing compliance amongst the private sector.
Just as tenants have their tribunal outcomes made public, landlords do too. The bloodsuckers you speak of would hate nothing more than having to pay a tenant and the govt $5000 because the wind whistles through their let. It would be good if via non compliance fines, the dept was almost self funding.
I think the slumlord tally will plummet. These are of course all good things.
But….as I say, there will be repercussions, we could and should be prepared for them.
The scum are upgrading their hovels because they have to.
Thing is, people have been living in these hovels because they can afford them ($200)* but the scum are chucking them out while they do $10/20k worth of work. And when these not quite hovels anymore do come back on the rental market, the scum have jacked the rents ($370)* beyond the former tenant’s means.
I seem to recall that the Government, as landlord (via Housing Corp) also has rented out substandard dwellings to desperate folk.
Maybe the trick would to bring their own properties up to scratch (apparently they had heaps of empty ones too) and rent those out first, before bitching about private landlords.
When pressed on whether he would be open to the use of genetic modification to help combat climate change, Minister Shaw told Corin Dann, “I want to see what the science says about that and what the Science Ethics Committee would say about that. I would be led by the science on it.”
Well, this raises the question as to whether NZ (?) scientists should be funded to undertake scientific research into other uses of GE to tackle other problems such as pest control. Or is it a matter of the end justifies the means? Sounds a bit too much like National to me …
If GE will transform pasture farming, protecting it from the effects of climate change and ensuring farm-resilience and sustainability, surely industry driven by the market and smart farmers, will invest in the technology.
Surely.
Scientific evidence is one main input into a healthy debate that looks at risks, benefits and economic returns as well. In a holistic way that looks at the whole of society and not just at a few fractions with invested interests (!) or ideological agendas.
the trouble being you cannot model the risks ie they are irreducible eg Nalimov
We can say that the nature of change in biology is random, since it is
impossible to find an expression for a sufficiently detailed description
that is considerably shorter than the “most complete” description of the
observed phenomenon. In other words, it is not possible to construct a
model of a generator of mutations in terms of ordinary cause-effect relations,
i.e., it is not possible to find the causes that unambiguously
generate the full diversity of observed mutations. Having found that the
nature of change is random, we are greatly surprised that there does not
exist an ordinary probabilistic description of the observed phenomena.
An ordinary statistical description of phenomena is possible if, on the
basis of the results of observations carried out on a small sample, we can
calculate the distribution parameters which make it possible to obtain an
idea of the behavior of the complete sequence of phenomena. In the case
of biological changes, observations made on a small sequence of
phenomena do not yield information about the subsequent behavior of
the system. In such a case, averaged characteristics have no significance.
The individual manifestations of the phenomena are important, irrespective
of their probability of occurrence.
I liked it for it’s simple format – ask five experts about the health implications compared to conventional diet. No brow beating, no ethical jabs, just a health focus.
I don’t really care what helps people eat less meat, some just get defensive when the ethics arguments are put up – so having health argued by several professionals is very useful.
Nice one Steve Kearney. I ran some of the sideline stuff for the Warriors games once, Steve’s huge!
Thanks for posting this mauī.
Yes, v.g. Stephen Kearney and family!
It is very encouraging seeing how more and more NZers are understanding and experiencing the health and environmental benefits of plant-based whole-food eating and it is attracting less of the knee-jerk fear reaction that it used to from threatened individuals in our mainstream ‘animal-slaughter-dependent’ country.
The knee-jerk fear reaction of the thousand or more households in my burg dependent on the meat industry for their livelihoods will probably be along the lines of WTF are we going eat.
Nice illustration – cheers.
Do you think they are fearing for their livelihoods, or what they are going to eat, or both!?
A little bit of knowledge would help them in either case.
The majority are seasonal workers so they know all about both fearing for their livelihoods and how tough it is to feed themselves during the off-season.
This appears to be going a little off-topic from the thread Joe. To bring it back in: seems then that they would be gainfully employed in plant based food production when the ‘vegan-green-peril’ fully takes over.
By then they will have learnt a full range of tasty vegan recipes, other than ‘lettuce and mayo’. They will be healthier and realise how much more affordable it is to feed themselves and their families on a meat-free, dairy-free diet.
seems then that they would be gainfully employed in plant based food production
I reckon I’ve heard something along those lines before. Oh, that’s right, like Douglass and Prebble before them, Bolger and Richardson assured us that new employment opportunities would abound…and then they proceeded to destroy literally thousands of jobs and tore the heart out of my community. Ain’t gonna happen again.
Yeah good point. The freezing works in several small towns are the major employers.
For myself, I don’t think NZ is going to lose all its dairy/meat production but we’ll have to bring herds down to carrying capacity, and diversify for resilience sake… but ultimately, rotational grazing is the HOW TO of sustainable meat production, with a few tweaks (reduce/remove salts and cides, replant many trees, biodiversity earthworks and water storage, on-site production of feedstock, trees on anything > 15 degrees…) NZ could lead the way in regenerative agriculture.
We are in pole position to create the best food in the world due to our distance from everything, good soils and high rainfall.
Once we’ve learned to keep and grow soil and capture and slow rain (they’re connected), we will not only be productive, but resilient.
I can’t see veganism as the future. I can see diets altering to encompass more plants both for human and planetary health. The freezing worker will still be here, but maybe not so many. there will be more work with trees, bees, aquaculture, fruits, nuts, medicines…
Its very different isn’t it? People making an informed choice about what they eat may certainly disrupt our ‘all eggs in one basket’ (pun intended) animal slaughter industry to some extent. Its hardly comparable to an ideological elite’s top-down imposition of neoliberalism on our lives.
We do need to ‘de-platform’ the ‘right wing angry middle class’ among us.
They only add anger and absolutely no positive resolution to any issue that we need to discuss with “a cool head”.
If they can’t make ‘constructive comments’ – they should be banned.
This was a very good article over on the Daily Blog that I commented on with constructive ways to “define who best to vote for over one issue we need to discuss.
So with the tax reform issue we need a similar voting platform to make our current leaders and (candidates) to define what they will vote for.
As we are the problem currently, – since we are lazy and just vote for these lazy useless Governments; – who just sit on the fence and do nothing; – all while the planet burns.
I am ashamed as I should be so I am 100% behind our young for standing up to show that we need to also get off our butts and get in the action also.
Vote out any lazy politician and Local Body councillor who refuses to stand up and join the fight to save our planet.
As this year being our ‘Local body Elections time’ we need to hold all those ‘potential Local Body candidates to account on climate change!!!
We need to have them all sign a questionnaire on climate change, and publish their plans to “commit” to vote for climate change!!!!
cleangreen
You are talking about making sure that politicians do what the people and the land need them to. And I think that is what a working democracry should be about.
We thought we had one, that was at least tottering along sometimes, and then making changes and getting better. Then the whole thing was overthrown by cutting government away and its regulations (the fat) and supposedly introducing a lean, fit model. Only it leaned too far and fell over! Hah.
Now we need participatory democracy. The people need to form a group of practical people looking to the future, each one with an interest in one of the major drivers of an
enterprise society perhaps transport, agriculture in general including horticulture, manufacturing in general, employment and understanding thoroughly the way that Stats gathers and presents figures for official is there a Household Labour Survey and why or not? Education and its value today, technology spread smothering traditional writing and communication, also what is driving the politicians, advisors, bureaucrats – who yanks their strings, provides the models they follow?
Then we get a picture of what is happening. You have reliable, informed academics who will give you an ear and perhaps address a meeting of keen learners. Then we can draw up rough plans for what is needed, bring the figures in to fill them out, make reasonable estimates of cost, look at who or what would be affected by it, perhaps that site is environmentally vulnerable, perhaps that local landowner would object even if it is public land, even if it is a necessary step for the good of the community. How can he/she be brought into the loop, be smoozed?
There was an interview this morning with a Mayor on the West Coast. He and one of his cohort organised some work without going through the required steps.l
He said they did it because it looked as if there was going to be a repeat of the flood that washed out their sewage ponds. They managed to avoid this and have done apparently a fairly good job of protection with a stopbank or something.
People have to do this, get full information, and then press hard for necessary steps. You cleangreen appear to be doing this in Gisborne. No doubt you have worked out a case for getting quick address to your problems, with steps that even the most reluctant decision maker must notice are straightforward and cogent.
I was reading a bit from David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell.
He starts a new Part with Ecclesiastes 9:11 –
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill;
but time and chance happeneth to them all.
So I guess we just hope our time will last long enough to give us the chance.
Lol. ‘There was blame on both sides’.
To take away their platform in the kindest possible way?
After all it surely isn’t so urgent that we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings!
I reckon bugger elections and democracy clean green, you and bunch of teenagers ( preferably suitably left and woke ) just determin the criteria and what constitutes correct thinking and then select who should be in council and in parliament
Thanks mauī, again I appreciate your posts today.
This is fascinating and I hope some of our right wing trolls who are fond of spouting their version of the truth here get an opportunity to watch (and think about) this.
Was rife on the East Coast 1980’s to early 1990’s basically organised crime, some of the Maori Trust Blocks got hammered, one block at Te Arararoa lost 100 x breeding cows and a Station in the Waikura Valley lost 300 x 2 tooth breeding ewes, this ain’t just the odd animal for the freezer.
Truck @ trailers required for these sort of numbers.
I imagine Mr Shaw may be getting a little bit nervous.
After almost a year of the MSM ignoring the total stuff up by his Department in their attempt to hold a Census Stuff is starting to run stories about it. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/111052779/365-days-and-still-counting-census-2018-results-nowhere-to-be-seen
Young James has spent all that time with a blindfold on and his hands jammed over his ears while he, ever more desperately, claims that everything will turn out all right, and anyway “it wasn’t my fault”.
Well tough luck James. It was your fault and your refusal to do anything about it should cause you sacking.
Have a look in the linked article. You don’t have to accept my opinion.
As Auckland University Statistician Andrew Sporle says
“”It’s a bit of a disaster, we don’t know how bad, but we know it’s a disaster.”
He said it appeared Stats NZ’s follow through after the initial response, which was adequate, had faltered.”
In other words it was what happened after the Census that has caused the havoc and Shaw is totally responsible for that.
Shaw also claims that it will not be possible to arrange a Census in 2021. What that means is that he, and his Department, have wasted 12 months that could have been put into organizing it.
Economist Brian Easton has also commented on Shaw’s Shambles. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/111044133/census-mess-can-be-resolved-with-a-new-one-in-2021
Brian, who certainly doesn’t lean to the right says that the Census is unlikely to be accepted by a Court as meeting the statutory obligations that exist. He is also quite scathing about the argument that it is impossible to run a proper one in 2021.
As he says.
“Stats NZ has claimed that it takes three years (instead of two years and nine months) to run a new census. But I am told that if it uses the existing good parts of the 2018 census with the 2013 enumerator system, it will take 18 months to organise.
So it could start the task as late as this September. All it requires is leadership, although it may be sensible to bring back (sometimes out of retirement) the team that ran the 2013 enumeration.”
Well Mr Shaw is supposedly the leader. Unfortunately he has demonstrated he is anything but a good one.
There is a lovely old US saying about people like James Shaw.
“Piss or get off the pot”.
As most people will recognize it means stop procrastinating an do something.
Mr Shaw appears to be incapable of doing anything. He should resign.
If he won’t then the PM should follow the US idiom. She should sack him.
Now there is a man who isn’t afraid to demonstrate his antipathy to a politician.
You do realize that the delay we “managed to cope with”, and which was 2 years not 5 years by the way, was due to the Christchurch earthquake?
Now you are quite happy to delay the Census by 5 years and happily go from 2013 to 2123 to get any sensible results.
I am not a great enthusiast for Mr Shaw as a Minister of the Crown, as people who read what I say about him here may be aware. To put it briefly I think he has been useless.
However I really wouldn’t go as far as you do and describe his activities as being a great deal more of a disaster than the Earthquake was.
That’s nice dear. I’m sure that you absolutely adore the dishy Mr Shaw.
What do you rate him at on a scale of 0 to 10?
Actually don’t bother. If someone wants to be a Minister of the Crown I don’t care how he is rated by the ladies. I only care about whether he can do the job and Shaw has been an abject failure.
But you know that don’t you?
Shock! – I agree with you about the Census stuff up.
Not ready to blame JS like you have though. Being a Green supporter, I will try very hard to understand what his part in this was – let’s see how he handles it when the results are published.
I fear, like Brian Easton, that any fudged results they manage to cook up will not satisfy a Court that they are of a legally sufficient quality. The thing a true leader would have done was to recognize that possibility immediately after the results were in doubt and start a parallel path of preparing to rerun the exercise in 2021. This could have been done at the same time as they were trying to patch up the data.
They should also have tried to quickly get more people into the field to try and contact the people who were missed. Chase up those people who had done the job in 2013 and recruit as many of them as possible. They at least had once been trained.
It would appear that Shaw, in the time between becoming Minister and the Census didn’t satisfy himself that it was going to be on track on the day. He still seems to be in a complete state of denial even a year after the fiasco. It was his job to ask questions of the Officials and satisfy himself that the answers made sense.
You did notice that MR (or Dr) Sporle said that the problems only occurred after the Census date. Up till then things were going OK. If all the problems started 5 or 6 months after the current lot took office an attempt to blame it all on National is only something a person like you or the current PM would attempt.
The pm doesn’t do that. She always picks up responsibility for her patch.
I didn’t read what your wrote about James Shaw. I will if I have time. I had read that the f ups were down to previous govt, but realize that that may not be the case
Ok alywyn, just read the article. You have selectively used quotes to implicate Shaw. The review of what went wrong is due mid 2019. The follow up you referred to would have been designed under national. I gave you the benefit of the doubt, but actually you were spinning.
Hah, bloody hah.
I have been complaining about the stuffed up Census since a few weeks after it took place. The second I saw the percentage of the population that had responded I thought that it couldn’t possibly be rectified.
Lots of people on this site claimed that everything was OK and that of course they would get usable numbers.
Well they were wrong and an awful lot of other people are now saying the same things that I have been saying for the best part of a year.
You may not care about statistics, or the Census.
That is because you are an ignorant fool. Read Easton’s article that I linked to and then ask yourself how they can possibly settle on electorate boundaries, the number of Maori seats, allocations to DHBs or money going to schools without a valid Census? The law requires that they get it right.
Claiming that people, and by implication you, aren’t interested merely demonstrates how stupid you really are. But then your comments show that on almost every occasion you burst into song here.
I think they could make reasonable guesses on DHBs. Maori electorates won’t have changed much because the previous government made sure they couldn’t get ahead. Schools might be an issue. It’s a pity the Nats didn’t collect data on all the money flooding into the country via property investment.
I suppose he is far to busy arranging his next little jaunt to attend a conference on how to fly less which will be held in some exotic far distant place.
Heh Bozo. The only real job you have is Statistics and their major task is the Census. Do your job you lazy sod.
The hard part is going to be generating the political will.
.
“Right now, we have about ninety per cent or ninety-five per cent of the technology we need,” Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, told me. In a series of papers, Jacobson and his colleagues have laid out “roadmaps” to a zero-emissions economy for fifty states, fifty-three towns and cities, and a hundred and thirty-eight other countries, with a completion date of 2050. Just as in the Democrats’ Green New Deal, the central element of these roadmaps (and others) is converting the electric grid to clean energy by shutting down power stations that rely on fossil fuels and making some very large investments in wind, solar, hydroelectric, and geothermal facilities. Jacobson said this could be completed by 2035, which is only five years beyond the target set out in the Green New Deal. At the same time, policymakers would introduce a range of measures to promote energy efficiency, and electrify other sectors of the economy that now rely heavily on burning carbon, such as road and rail transport, home heating, and industrial heating. “We don’t need a technological miracle to solve this problem,” Jacobson reiterated. “‘The bottom line is we just need to deploy, deploy, deploy.”
Convert all land-based energy use to electric. Short flights go to electric, long-haul will need biofuels. There’s a good chance shipping will find small modular nuclear reactors to be the best option.
I can’t think of a better way to boost the economy than doing all the R&D, manufacturing and infrastructure work needed to make that happen.
Reactors for use in shipping are a tenth the size or less of land-based electricity generation reactors. So a Fukushima or Chernobyl or Three Mile Island accident has negligible probability of happening, simply because the thermal runaway issues are exponentially related to reactor size.
In a ship, there’s always coolant available right there. Unlike Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima which all had loss of cooling as a key part of what went wrong.
The radioactive material is always inside a seriously grunty containment vessel, so dropping a steaming pile of uranium on the seabed just aint gonna happen. The worst case scenario is breaking off the coolant lines going in and out of the containment vessel so seawater can go in and out of the containment vessel. Which will release a very small amount of radioactive material with the initial flushing out of the coolant that will very quickly dilute and dissipate.
After that, to release radioactive material, they will need to be dissolved into the seawater. The concentration of uranium in seawater is already quasi-saturated, so it’s going to be just barely above background levels.
So no, there wouldn’t suddenly be three-headed fish on the menu in the BOP. By any rational assessment, the worst-case ecosystem damage done by a hypothetical nuke-powered Rena would be much less than the actual damage done by the actual bunker oil spilled by the actual Rena.
But we’ve had decades of overhyped scare stories about the nuclear boogeyman, so rational assessment probably aint gonna count for squat if we’re ever called on to figure out how we feel about nuke-powered ships in our ports.
edit: Here’s an industry puff-piece on existing marine use of nuclear propulsion. Glossy spin to be sure, but it’s still a useful illustration of the scope of what’s already out there.
Apparently at Chernobyl they were doing some kind of test that involved fucking with the cooling system.
Three Mile Island had sequential failures of cooling components. IIRC, starting with pumps, then a valve stuck open. Shitty operator interface design contributed to operators not correctly understanding what was going wrong and then taking incorrect steps to try to fix it.
I can’t see that we’re ever actually gonna be called on the consider the question.
Oil prices would have to be up over $200/barrel, maybe $300, to make nukes look economically attractive to shipping companies. The only way I see that happening is a worldwide carbon price of at least $300/tonne CO2e that captures shipping as well. Maybe more like $600 or $1000/tonne. On an industry that is remarkably successful at avoiding getting taxed and regulated.
When you consider the Soviet/ Russian Nuclear accidents over the yrs, it’s a ticking time bomb waiting to go pop like Chernobyl or like their Nuke Subs or Ships. Just google earth/ maps of the Northern Fleet dockyards and see all their Nuclear Subs and their Cruisers in various states of this disrepair.
I think even Greenpeace has a piece on this wee monster of ticking time bomb?
Greenpeace’s knee-jerk anti-nuclear-power stance is one of the reasons I’ve gone off them.
To me, closing down an already built running nuclear power station somewhere like Germany, just because nuclear, makes no sense at all. For starters, the big environmental costs have already been incurred, like the original build, irradiation of the guts of it on startup etc. The ongoing marginal environmental cost of continued operation is pretty minimal.
Then there’s the way shortfalls in electricity production from shutting a nuke is likely to be made up by burning coal. Which is vastly more environmentally damaging than nuclear, even counting Fukushima and Chernobyl and TMI and all the others.
Yet Greenpeace is right at the forefront of demanding nuke power plants be shut down. It’s quite the environmental and climate own goal.
I do agree that shutting down the German Nuclear Power plants is just plain crazy and as you said doesn’t make any sense at all. But I do think Greenpeace concerns on this wee ticking time bomb is quite valid, given the track record of the Russians to run a Nuclear Power safety.
BM, did you ever see the footage from the Jap Coast Guard Vessel (about the same size of one of the RNZN OPV’s) riding the Tsunami waves some 50 plus km’s offshore? The ship was lucky to get to the crest of wave and nearly didn’t have a enough herbs to get over the second and third waves.
In the event of an accident, atmospheric dispersal of radioactive debris in a low population area (at sea for instance) might be less harmful to humans, but dispersal by ocean current would be disastrous for marine life and coastal communities, potentially for thousands of kilometres.
True, but if it’s close inshore when a Tsunami hits. I wouldn’t want to be near that thing in a month of Monday’s, even if I had a bucket full of iodine pills while wear a noddy suit at the same time.
I think Andre below, pretty well sums up my thoughts on this.
Fukushima was a fuck up evidently the cooling systems weren’t serviced properly and helped cause the melt down, stupid place to build s Nuclear Plant – Stupid Yanks Again ?
The general concept has some merits. It’s an example of where the rooskies have kept going with reactor developments and may be in a pretty good position if a market for small modular reactors ever develops.
The reactors are essentially the same design the rooskies have successfully used for quite a while in icebreakers. They’re modestly sized (150MW thermal, 35MW electrical compared to Chernobyl reactors being 3200MW thermal 1000MW electrical each), so if shit goes down with them it won’t be much shit.
Things I don’t like about them are: Russian engineering and manufacturing and respect for safety and the environment ain’t the greatest, they’re old design pressurised water reactors that rely on active control systems working at all times, and PWRs produce a lot of radioactive waste relative to power generated.
There are newer reactors designs that respond to complete loss of control and power by depowering using the laws of physics rather than active control, which I find much more comfortable. There’s also newer designs that essentially burn their waste rather than requiring somewhere very secure to store the waste for a very long time (maybe rooskies don’t care about secure storage for the waste).
So I’ve got quite mixed thoughts on that particular application of nuclear tech.
Should add, the cost looks way up there. Wikipedia reckons the project cost will be around USD336 million for a 70MW electricity output. That’s around $5/watt of electrical output. Although since it’s Murmansk, they’re probably taking quite a bit of its output directly as heat.
For comparison, utility-scale wind and solar are on the order of $0.50/watt.
Never ever ever gonna be viable for on-land generation in New Zealand. We’ve got so much wind, geothermal and maybe even solar if needed that we just won’t need something that expensive and politically unpopular on land.
The alien unicorns will have arrived and started excreting working fusion plants out their back ends long before we tap out our renewables potential.
But if the world ever gets serious about eliminating greenhouse gas emissions, we may have a choice of either accepting nuke-powered ships in our ports or shutting ourselves off from the rest of the world.
To be honest BM, I don’t think Nuclear Power would be practical in NZ from a risk, safety and cost POV. A Nuclear Power station would’ve got done in the 50’s-late 60’s if NZ’s history in the Atomic age is anything to by.
but not now as the muppets in Treasury would have a fit, before the anti Nuke mob even got their finger out of their digit to organise any protest. Hell the Treasury Muppets are already having fits over the 20B DCP over 15- 20yrs last announce by the “No Mates Party and reconfirm by the current Government, so you think they will support this?
Complexity of operation and maintenance is a very good argument against quite a few classes of reactor design. Including all the pressurised water and light water reactor designs I’m aware of. Ironically, those designs are also the easiest to get regulatory approval for, since they’re based on legacy designs with long histories. Most expensive to actually build, too, because of the complexity, but the easier approval process counteracts that. That roosky nukes-on-barge thing BM linked to is one of those legacy type PWRs.
Several of the outfits working on newer next-gen reactors are specifically targeting outright eliminating maintenance requirements and simplifying operation to the point of making the reactor itself basically a “big battery” from the users point of view. At least the nuke thermal part, anyway, converting heat to electricity or mechanical power won’t ever be quite that simple. The containment vessel for all the radioactive bits would be all in one unit, fueled at the factory for several years of operation. Then when it’s depleted, the entire unit is pulled out and replaced with a refurbished refuelled unit, and the old one goes back to the factory for refurb and refuel.
If you can be bothered scrolling through the big article linked below you’ll find brief descriptions of several of these efforts. But none of them look anywhere near becoming commercial reality.
Safe, storage of large amounts of hydrogen is an issue, but scientists reckon it is, solvable. Note: The dangers of storing large quantities of gas or petrol.
Making hydrogen, of course requires a large source of sustainable electricity. Which New Zealand has the capability.
Unless we get the Holy Grail, Fusion, which is decades away, if ever. Continued nuclear energy for transport, remains unlikely.
Handling hydrogen is way way more difficult and dangerous than handling liquid fuels. Hydrogen embrittlement of metals, the way seals have to be metal-to-metal contact because hydrogen permeates through and reacts with polymers so quickly, hydrogen’s very wide range of explosive concentrations in air, the way hydrogen fires are nearly invisible to the naked eye (they put out a shitload of UV though)…
The round trip efficiency of using electricity to split water for hydrogen to mechanical work is very low. I don’t see us having enough excess of electricity any time soon to make that route to widespread use of hydrogen viable.
I reckon what might make hydrogen viable is if any of the teams working on photocatalytic hydrogen production has a breakthrough, or one of the lab methods of generating hydrogen from hydrocarbons without releasing CO2 has a breakthrough. One of the most interesting efforts in that area is bubbling methane up through molten metal, which releases nearly pure hydrogen and the carbon becomes a solid floating on top of the molten metal. Presumably like a sooty powder.
In the early noughties when the prospect of a hydrogen economy looked more likely, there was a fluffy of articles talking about risks to the ozone layer from leaked hydrogen. That question seems to have died off, but I haven’t found whether it was shown to be a non-issue, or whether it just reflects an assessed low probability of widespread hydrogen use.
Auckland City Council have Resource Consent to dump toxic sludge out of Auckland Viaduct Harbour into the pristine waters of Great Barrier Island so some rich wankers can have a silly little boat race in Auckland Harbour ?
I see nothing of the sort in the link provided. He said she said – no big deal. But if you need that illusion to help you get chubby by all means who am I to judge.
I just watched the full exchange and the PM clearly owned it.
The only thing I agree with is that yeah, it was funny.
Of course, you and the Herald shills are free to pretend to see it differently.
The acting leader of the nat party should be renamed ‘Slicks’, not for his hair, or love for big oil, but for the fact he get’s no traction when the red rain pours.
Your a funny chap there James, Jacinda neither lost it or Bridges looked in control, but you’re right it was a little funny. The Prime Minister ended still with a smile on her face and the Leader of the National Party looked like he was about to burst into tears. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
I can’t think why National’s only asking questions about the Cullen report. They’ve decided that recommendations in it are exactly what’s going to happen, the Government’s going to do everything suggested.
Surely they have the imagination to work out what’s going to come out of other reviews and can put the heat on the Government about the decisions they’ve already made to instigate all recommendations. You know, make it all up – should be easy from the fantasyland they’re in.
But if you dig deeper (not that I could give a fuck because of gNat and NZTA muppetry, AND if you consider the Levin Mayor’s contributions today to the debate) ….. it all couldn’t have happened to such ideologically driven peeps.
If you go back over the years from the dismantling of MOW, to out-saucing – even where bitumen is available (primarily from a private monopoly), Hark at Thee for trying to scream foul now.
Shudda Cudda Wudda.
I mean!!!!! this same shit happened before FFS on that same route.
Is there anyone among elected government representatives that has yet got past the flagellation phase of pandering to their ‘officials’ (who LEAST OF ALL have your best interests at heart)
As things pan out, I’m actually seriously worried about the Coalition and in particular some with Ministerial responsibilities.
For some, there some really FUCKING EASY gains to be made (e.g. with Immigration, OR with Land Transport, or various other things that could be done via Ministerial regulatory and ‘last chance’ options).
Doesn’t seem to be happening so far (and it’s what????? 12 -15 months)
Are some of them actually masochists do you think?
Why not email or write an actual letter just to show some of us know how* to the various Ministers you would like to test for masochism and see if you can penetrate their defence mechanisms.
(*Our city post office has just been abandoned for no reason except ideology. Here in Nelson it is very busy in the tourist season and we had a nice central location which is all being given over to Kiwi Bank. With a different design we could have given Kiwi bank pride of place and had a simpler post office set up but no it has to go to the back of a nearby private book and stationery shop. Bloody Post Office dimwits and vandals. They have made up their mind that it’s a dying business and are speeding it on its way – just too unimaginative to keep it going with a simpler business model that differs depending on the site and location.)
I’m on the move again @grey, so difficult to give you a full reply atm, but I have done so in the past as have others from various advocacy groups, unions, and so on – AND provided instances (cases) where people have been let down – either through under-resourcing, inexperience, or just sheer muppetry.
What is annoying is that in many many instances, the failings (MBIE, NZTA, Health, DHBs, WINZ, HNZ etc.) is all a matter of record.
And though I don’t necessarily agree with NZ1’s approach to some of our PS (the Senior ranks), I can understand their frustration.
Unless there is some sort of reform of the PS, it is going to be hard for this coalition to be “transformational”.
Immigrant worker exploitation (for example) could AT LEAST be minimised, along with its flow on effects in driving down wages quite easily. I’m wondering whether the only reason a couple of simple steps haven’t been taken is because there is fear that a flood of complaints might overwhelm the Labour Inspectorate – but which to do you more important? I’d suggest trying to minimise the exploitation and eventually holding the exploiters to account trumps anything based on past bad policy advice.
Kia ora The AM Show Its cool that today is international Wahines day for equality its is a cause that Eco Maori champions. They won’t let a truly powerful Artificial Intelligence program to give financial advice to the masses as the billionaire won’t be able to ripp us off.
Its more than just sports that is fixed in our society.
The Hokatika Wild foods festival would be great to go and see there are Alot of bush food that we could harvest that we don’t even know about it would be good for the environment and organic as well
Why is Fonterra selling its silver ware its stupid are some of the people in the know lining Tip top up to buy cheap and than resell making huge profits at the expense of farmers selling is also not logical when interest rates are at historical lows.???????????????????. With the Rugby The people who control the World don’t want a team called the All Blacks domanating World Rugby don’t let the bigots win.
Nice money Phil Goff has good control of Auckland he is doing a great job.
Our return armed forces personnel NZDF do need more care I see all Around the world that they are suffering mental fatigue physically disabled but I would never let my Mokopunas go to war no one wins in war. judy its all very well that you’re child can afford private education but most people can not hence our government invested in our future with the money given to our youths education.
Sir Michael Cullen has more Good knowledge on the tax system than the whole of the national party. There moto is giving more to the wealthy and take more from the poor. Anyperson with a logical brain can work out that is a unsustainable model when money is consentrated in a few hands. Te tangata te tangata te tangata when everyone ha enough KAI all te tangata are healthy and happy when only a few have all the KAI nobody is happy Ka kite ano
Don’t believe the sandflys lieing spinning about what’s going on in my life at the minute. You can not compare my situation with ANYONE else’s it Eco Maori. For one they will and have use everything at their disposal to try and LOCKME UP the power of the states spy’s and NOTHING if they had one shread of evedince they would have locked me up druged me up and carry on shitting on the common people. Ana to kai. Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
I read a bit about this plite happening to Our Native Amercian and Canada Wahine Cousins I could not believe what I had read I waited for some more information on the subject Its SHOCKING that these Wahine from Amercia and Canada are missing and 4 to 5 x as much as whites WTF in a first world country this should not be happening. The aurthoritys could find them or what happened to them but because tangata whenua/ people of the land cultures are being suppressed all around the world they DONT GIVE A SHIT.
REDress exhibit highlights epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women
Haunting outdoor art installation by Canadian artist Jaime Black is on display at Washington DC Museum
The REDress Project, an outdoor art installation by Métis artist Jaime Black at Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC. Photograph: Katherine Fogden/National Museum of the American Indian
T
hirty-five red dresses hung on winter-bare trees lining the Riverwalk along the National Museum of the American Indian. A woman pushing a stroller stopped to watch the garments twist in the wind, staring at the smallest dress in the collection – one that would fit a little girl.
The REDress Project is a haunting outdoor art installation in Washington DC by Canadian artist Jaime Black meant to symbolize the epidemic of violence against indigenous women and girls.
“Every visitor will have a different experience with the dresses,” said Machel Monenerkit, the deputy director of the National Museum of American Indian. “But you cannot walk through this installation and not have some emotional experience.”
For years and at astonishing rates, Native women in the United States, Canada and across the continent have gone missing or been murdered. Native American women are 10 times more likely to be murdered and four times more likely to be sexually assaulted than the national average, according to a recent report by the US Commission on Civil Rights.
But in the era of #MeToo and after the first two Native American women were elected to Congress in 2018, there is a renewed effort to account for the disappearances and prevent future tragedies. Ka kite ano links below .
Kia ora Te ao Maori News I say that those youth justice prison are training grounds for our tamariki to learn bad habits off the harden tamariki that are in their it needs to have more than just a Maori name it needs to be run by Maori as we will teach them good principles and love them not loave them and treat them like a treasure not dirt.
Tipuni Kokori is only a shell compare to the Mana funding it once had and Eco Maori says it need more funding to help Maori tangata and businesses.
Sports is a good way for OUR tamariki to climb up to their maximum heights on their ladders of life. I was to busy trying to building my Maunga plus we live in the wopwops to concentrate on my tamariki sport te Wahine was sleeping. That’s good to know to karakia to the Stars
Ka pai Ken the break dancer Tau toko smoke free I hear that the Olympic committee is considering having break danceing in the Olympic. Ka kite ano
Te billionares oil barron climate change suppressors do obey any rules mans or GOD,s keep up the good mahi tamariki /good work children
Student climate change strike: Rules don’t matter when you’re fighting for your future
OPINION: I have a memory of my grandfather saying that, when he was young, children were to be seen and not heard. Reflecting on it now, I suspect that I was being naughty at the time and he was suggesting that I might consider being seen and not heard.
On March 15, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of young people are intending to walk out of their classrooms. They will take to the streets to protest decades of complacency and inaction on climate change, on the part of the adults whose first responsibility should have been the future these kids will inherit.
Since the “School Strike 4 Climate” was announced, a number of adults have expressed apparent concern for the impact that taking time out of school will have on the education of these young students.
But I don’t remember any concern for the impact on my schooling when I was marshalled out of class for a morning so I could wave to a fast-passing limousine bearing Prince Charles and Lady Diana on their visit to Wellington in 1983.
It wouldn’t have helped bring an end to apartheid if protesters had rented side-line advertising space during half time at the All Blacks v Springboks test matches in 1981.
And homosexual law reform wouldn’t have happened if gay rights activists had stayed in the closet and out of sight.
Should kids be skipping school to shout about inaction on climate change? I wish they didn’t feel they had to. I wish they weren’t left feeling like they have to fight for their futures.
That’s why I, as your Green Party minister in this Government, will make sure we bring the Zero Carbon Bill into law.
That law will establish an important certainty in Aotearoa New Zealand, that we can and must reduce the greenhouse gas pollution which is overheating our planet and threatening the delicate balance that maintains our existence.
There may once have been a time when it was considered right and proper that children should be seen and not heard. But when our children feel like they’re fighting for their future, this is not that time.
James Shaw is the co-leader of the Green Party and the Minister for Climate Change. Ka kite ano links below.
Eco Maori Say Kia Kaha Mana Wahine pay equity Equality will give ladys the power to fight for a good cause Wahines Mana if power is money and the men are given 10 to 100 x more money than Wahine if we do close the wage gap than we will never get EQUALITY for Wahine
United States women’s football team sues for equitable pay
Players for the US women’s national football team have filed a gender discrimination lawsuit seeking pay that is equitable to that of their male counterparts
The action comes just three months before the team will defend its title at the women’s World Cup in France.
The players allege that they have been subject to ongoing “institutionalised gender discrimination,” including unequal pay, despite having the same job responsibilities as players on the men’s national team. The 28 members of the current national team player pool joined in the class-action lawsuit against the US Soccer Federation, which was filed Friday in federal court in Los Angeles under the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The players are seeking equitable pay and treatment, in addition to damages including back pay.
`And hopefully in that way it inspires women everywhere.”
The US Women’s National Team Players Association was not party to the lawsuit, but in a statement said it “supports the plaintiffs’ goal of eliminating gender-based discrimination by USSF.”
The US Soccer Federation didn’t have an immediate comment.
The USSF has maintained in the past that much of the pay disparity between the men’s and women’s teams results from separate collective bargaining agreements.
The women’s team set up its compensation structure, which included a guaranteed salary rather than a pay-for-play model like the men, in the last labor contract. The players also earn salaries – paid by the federation – for playing in the National Women’s Soccer League.
The women receive other benefits, including health care, that the men’s national team players don’t receive, the federation has maintained.
This is not the first time the players have sought equitable compensation and conditions. Ka kite ano links below P.S There was nothing wrong with our best mens sports team so why has it been turned insideout
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been busy preparing for our summer paper on Science Communication. Looking for something amusing about ‘risk’ in science, I came across this neat xkcd.com cartoon about why so many people come knocking on my door (or phoning me, or emailing me) desperately wanting ...
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For some reasons, my post about the mystery message from inside the Downing Street bunker seemed to catch people's attention. Quite a lot of hits from NZ (unsurprisingly) and the USA (a bit more puzzlingly, but hi there, USAians!!) and 76 views from the Ukraine.I've celebrated my Ukrainian readers in ...
First, almost a score of Labour MPs seem to have sent a letter to the EU basically begging them to accept a deal - any deal - just so Britain can get the Heck on with Brexiting instead of being trapped in limbo:
by Phil Duncan In 2016 the National-led government suspended the Parent Visa Category, through which migrants were able to bring their parents into New Zealand. Since then over 5,700 people have been in immigration limbo, stuck on the visa wait list. Labour is now bringing back the scheme. Well, sort ...
The following was released yesterday (Tues, October 8) by the women’s liberation organisation Speak Up for Women. On 23 September Speak Up For Women announced that we would be holding an event at the Massey University Theaterette in Wellington. The event is called Feminism 2020. The intention of the event ...
The government is currently consulting on plans to improve freshwater quality. So naturally, farmers oppose it:South Taranaki farmers are preparing to fight proposed national freshwater changes that some fear will bankrupt them. The Government's proposed National Environment Standard on Freshwater Management, released in September, rated the Waingongoro River as one ...
Yesterday was the last day for (reliably) posting your vote away in local body elections. Turnouts are mostly much lower than the equivalent time last year (Palmerston North is down 2.3%), and so naturally people are pushing their online-voting snake oil again. Because the online census worked so well, lets ...
This essay, on the political legacy of the eugenics movement, by Kenan Malik was originally published in the Observer on 6 October 2019, under the headline ‘The spirit of eugenics is still with us, as immigrants know to their cost’. Birth control. Intelligence tests. Town planning. Immigration controls. It’s striking how ...
Another year, and the government has announced another enormous government "surplus". And just like last year, its nothing of the sort. When we have people homeless and sick and hungry, when we have schools and hospitals still falling down, when we have underpaid public servants and infrastucture unmaintained or unbuilt, ...
James Forsyth at The Spectator (I know, I know) has tapped one of his contacts inside Number Ten for an insight into the Johnson administration's thinking and strategy.It is fascinating, unsettling and quite, quite mad. Some key points:Negotiations have stalled and the Johnson administration are keen to blame the EU: ...
Fatal Contact: With the arrival of captain James Cook in October 1769, the islands of what would become New Zealand ceased to be the preserve of Polynesian navigators and settlers and became a part of both the world’s map and the world’s history.THE MAORI NATIONALIST assault upon the historical meaning ...
Another round of tactical talks about forming a Government of National Unity have come to nothing with the Liberal Democrats still refusing countenance putting Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street:Opposition talks on Monday made little headway over when to try and vote down Boris Johnson's government and who might succeed him as ...
by Nick Rogers The debate around the meaning of sex and gender made an appearance at this year’s British Labour Party conference in Brighton. Women’s Place UK – an organisation that questions the demand that biological males who self-identify as woman should have access to women’s spaces, to all-women shortlists, ...
Yesterday I went down to Wellington to participate in the Extinction Rebellion protest. Its part of the latest global wave of XR actions, with actions happening all over the world. Some of those protests are massively disruptive: in Canada, XR is blocking major bridges, stopping people from getting to work. ...
The Workshop is a charitable trust for public good. The Workshop undertake research to find ways of communicating that will build support for the solutions that work to solve complex social and environmental problems. See their Report on Talking about Poverty and Welfare Reform below. ...
What is language? We generally assume that it a facility unique to humans, allowing us to share what’s in and on our minds. We can tell of our plans, our past exploits, our knowledge. It also allows us to lie. And yet there are vast numbers of people we can’t ...
Being and Being Bought (Spinifex Press, 2013) by Kajsa Ekis Ekman A synopsis and commentary of Chapters 1-2 by Daphna Whitmore Ekman, a Swedish journalist and critic, brings together a Marxist and feminist analysis of prostitution and surrogacy in this groundbreaking book She opens the discussion with a definition of ...
I make no claims to having much legal knowledge, so I defer to those trained in this area.I am very much enjoying this twitter stream from m'learned friend in Edinburgh, deciphering the legal arguments around the Scottish court challenge to Boris Johnson, based on the charmingly obscure principle of Nobile ...
Ivory Folly? The University of Auckland’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stuart McCutcheon, upheld the right of the radical nationalist group, Action Zealandia to exercise their freedom of speech – not matter how distasteful that speech might be. A wiser community of students and scholars would have nodded their agreement and moved on. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is predicting a hard Brexit for the United Kingdom, as he believes British Prime Minister Boris Johnson won’t be able to negotiate terms before the October 30 deadline. The Minister, who was one of the first to publicly come out and predict British voters would leave ...
Speaking at the Council of Trade Unions' (CTU) biennial conference, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters told unionists that any future attacks on the Government won't work. "Now, we are being attacked by the union movement in this country. You can have your views but I'm here to say standing ...
We want every New Zealander to be happy, safe, and healthy. To do this, we need to support strong, safe communities, and a robust and efficient health system. ...
Defence Minister Ron Mark has used his powers to overrule a noise complaint ruling against Whenuapai airbase on the grounds of "national security". The Environment Court last month released a ruling in favour of a private developer, declaring the Auckland airbase had to comply with noise restrictions when it performs ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has opened fire against "unreconstructed morons" after NZ First MP Shane Jones was photographed on holiday holding an AR-15 rifle. Mr Peters is defending Mr Jones, telling Magic Talk host Peter Williams that his MP was just having fun "like most people do". "The ...
New Zealand First Deputy Leader and Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau was in attendance during the morning blessing of the Rotorua Lakefront development project. Around 60 people gathered on the shores of Lake Rotorua, including city mayor Steve Chadwick and deputy Dave Donaldson. The Lakefront development is a ...
Forestry Minister Shane Jones is considering reining in on conversions of farmland to forestry, and also issued a warning to foreign-owned forestry companies that make up nearly 75 per cent of the industry. He said too many foreign companies had not provided enough access for domestic processors to get timber. ...
Speaking to Radio NZ, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said the tightening of the parental category visa is a direct result of the Party’s coalition negotiations with the Labour Party. He said the new changes switch the financial onus from the parent moving to New Zealand to the child ...
The Coalition Government is set to cut red tape in the building and construction sector in an effort to allow more houses to be built, including prefabricated houses. The changes will enable the mass factory production of "high quality" buildings, slash the likely number of building inspections for factory produced ...
Since coming into Government, we’ve worked hard to tackle homelessness and make sure everyone has a warm, dry home. And today, on World Homeless Day, we want to report back and update you on our progress so far. ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has hit back at National Party leader Simon Bridges who criticized the Coalition Government’s approach to crime, and said that the latter isn't credible in his attack on the Government over gang recruitment. "We've got as massive drug problem in this country. It is ...
New Zealand Mānuka honey exporters have welcomed an initiative by the Coalition Government to help secure the term “mānuka honey” to be used exclusively by Kiwi exporters, ensuring that our multimillion-dollar industry is protected. Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones had recently announced that a Provincial Growth Funding of $5.7 ...
Political commentator Mike Hosking has labelled New Zealand First leader Winston Peters as “the voice of reason in a government soft on drugs”, for the Party’s stance on drug testing at music festivals. “If common sense is worth a vote, Winston Peters is quids in,” Mr Hosking said. The Labour ...
Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau has announced Provincial Growth Funding to ensure work opportunities in Turangi and Whanganui, through its skills and employment programme, Te Ara Mahi. A fund of $500,000 will go to Rafting NZ in Turangi for a 16-week river guide training course to train ...
Treasury has shown that the Coalition Government has a $7.5 billion surplus, which is $4 billion higher than what was expected in the 2019 Budget unveiled last May. It is also $2 billion higher than the actual surplus unveiled this time last year, and at a size that has not ...
Official Information Act figures released to NZME show there were 350 assaults on officers in the year to the end of June, 79 more than the year before. The increase in attacks have sparked calls for more legal protection for first responders to be enacted. The assaults included officers being ...
“Nobody wants to see babies uplifted”, this was the pronouncement of Minister for Children Hon. Tracey Martin as her department, Oranga Tamariki, faces multiple inquiries into the number of babies being taken from their families. “But a baby can die with a single punch, “the Minister continued. “So sometimes, Oranga ...
We're making progress on tackling the long-term challenges: from homelessness, to strengthening border security, to bringing banking back New Zealand's small towns. ...
Associate Transport Minister Shane Jones has backed the ambitious plan to move Auckland’s port to Northport, at Whangarei harbour, which he says will be the “King Kong of infrastructure”. The plan is part of the recommendations of a six-person independent working group, which has recommended the Ports of Auckland be ...
A six-member independent working group selected the option of moving Auckland’s port to Northport, in Whangarei, ahead of other options. In what could be New Zealand’s most ambitious infrastructure project yet, a major expansion of the Marsden Point port could happen within 15 years. The project, officially called the “Upper ...
The final Electricity Price Review recommended prohibiting prompt payment discounts but allowing “reasonable” late fees. The findings of this review was welcomed by the Coalition Government, but they hope companies will follow through with its recommendations without regulations needed to be passed. Meridian Energy had already stopped prompt payment discounts, ...
Fletcher Tabuteau, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF)through its skills and employment programme, Te Ara Mahi,will invest nearly $600,000 to ensure work opportunities for locals in Turangia and Whanganui, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced today. “I’m pleased to announce the PGF ...
An export-led economy is one of New Zealand First’s key principles, and our commitment to achieving this is shown by the continuing skyrocketing demand for our beef and sheep meat exports. Beef + Lamb New Zealand's New Season Outlook 2019-20 report forecasts beef, lamb and mutton prices to lift from ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today in Gisborne an investment of $17.27m into bringing “world-leading” food-growing technology and the creation of more than 100 new jobs in the East Coast city. The funding comes from the Provincial Growth Fund, and included a $15 million loan to LeaderBrand, a ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development More than 100 people in Tairāwhiti’s Tolaga Bay will benefit from two employment initiatives supported by the Provincial Growth Fund, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones and Employment Minister Willie Jackson announced today. “Tolaga Bay is an incredibly tight-knit community, but one in ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is supporting Gisborne business Leaderbrand to produce salad vegetables year round and create more jobs in the Tairāwhiti region, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “Our support for Leaderbrand will help them build large greenhouses ...
“Nobody wants to see babies uplifted”, this was the pronouncement of Minister for Children Hon. Tracey Martin as her department, Oranga Tamariki, faces multiple inquiries into the number of babies being taken from their families. “But a baby can die with a single punch, “the Minister continued. “So sometimes, Oranga ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has praised the promise by New Zealand’s biggest banks not to close any provincial branches while the Coalition Government trials regional banking hubs across the country. The Minister said the announce was the “first sign of hope for regional communities”, many of which have ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, New Zealand First Leader New Zealand First is proud to have delivered an upgrade of the SuperGold Card website and a new smartphone app, which will help unlock the full benefits of the SuperGold Card for 750,000 New Zealand seniors.Party Leader Rt Hon Winston Peters, ...
Delivering a key election campaign promise, New Zealand First is proud to have accomplished a long overdue upgrade of the SuperGold Card today. At an event in Auckland, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters joined Minister for Seniors Hon. Tracey Martin in unveiling the new website and smartphone app which ...
The Minister of Fisheries is calling for entries for a new public award to celebrate innovation in our seafood sector. “I have established the Seafood Sustainability Awards to recognise and celebrate those throughout industry, tangata whenua and communities who demonstrate outstanding dedication and innovation towards the sustainability of New Zealand’s ...
Minister for Women Julie Anne Genter welcomes leaders in the private sector taking action on closing their gender pay gaps to ensure a fairer workplace for all New Zealanders. Ms Genter today launched a new report, Addressing the gender pay gap and driving women’s representation in senior leadership, from the Champions for ...
Government Ministers today welcomed the release of a marine environment report highlighting the four key issues affecting our oceans, estuaries and coastlines. The release underlines the importance of government proposals to combat climate pollution, ensure clean freshwater, protect biodiversity, make land use more sustainable, and reduce waste and plastic. Environment ...
The Government has approved funding for a new acute mental health facility for Waikato which will provide better care and support to people with mental health and addiction issues. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Health Minister Dr David Clark announced the $100 million project to replace the aging Henry Rongomau ...
The Government is making progress on its goal to integrate te reo Māori into education by 2025, with over 500 teachers and support staff already graduating from Te Ahu o te Reo Māori, Associate Education Minister Kelvin Davis announced today. Kelvin Davis made the announcement at an awards ceremony in Waikanae today, for ...
Statistics Minister James Shaw has welcomed the first release of 2018 Census data. The first release of data today, 23 September, includes key data on population, regional growth, the number of homes and the size of different ethnic groups in New Zealand. Data from the 2018 Census will support the ...
Minister for Statistics James Shaw today announced a public consultation on a proposed algorithm charter for government agencies. The charter has been developed by the Government Chief Data Steward in response to growing calls for more transparency in government use of data. Computer algorithms – procedures or formulas for solving ...
Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor, Climate Change Minister James Shaw and visiting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte co-hosted a business roundtable in Auckland this morning focused on working together to address climate change. “The Netherlands is an important partner for New Zealand. We share a strong agricultural history. Sustainable agribusiness and ...
The Government is taking action to build an inclusive economy where more of us receive our fair share at work and businesses can compete on great products and services, not undercutting wages and conditions, Immigration and Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says. Two consultations launched today seek feedback ...
The future for New Zealand’s threatened indigenous freshwater fish looks brighter with the passing of the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill in Parliament today said Minister of Conservation, Eugenie Sage. “Until now, our freshwater fish legislation has been 20 years out of date. We have lacked effective tools to ...
At 1.30pm tomorrow, hundreds of thousands of Kiwis will join about 65 million people around the globe in ShakeOut, the world’s biggest earthquake drill. The annual drill is to remind people of the right action to take during an earthquake which is to Drop, Cover, Hold, and to practise their ...
Kiwis are benefiting from higher wage growth and low inflation under the Coalition Government. Stats NZ data out today shows the rise in the cost of living remains low, as annual Consumers Price Index (CPI) inflation fell to 1.5% in September from 1.7% in June. “The low inflation comes as ...
New Zealand’s economic strength and resilience has been recognised in a major update on the state of the global economy. The IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook released overnight shows a reduced global growth forecast over the next two years as issues like the US-China trade war and Brexit take hold. ...
Justice Minister Andrew Little has today introduced a new Bill to prevent terrorism and support the de-radicalisation of New Zealanders returning from overseas. The Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill gives the New Zealand Police the ability to apply to the High Court to impose control orders on New Zealanders who ...
A Bill that proposes targeted changes to simplify the processes for Māori land owners when engaging with the Māori Land Court has had its First Reading today. “The approach taken by the Government is to ensure that the protection of Māori land remains a priority as we seek to improve ...
Let me first thank all the new unionists and members in the room. There is nothing more important to improving people’s working lives than people making the decision to care, to get on board and help, to take up the reins and get involved. Congratulations to you. You bring the ...
Minister of Defence Ron Mark has signed a certificate exempting the activity of engine testing at Whenuapai Airbase from the Resource Management Act 1991. The Act gives the Minister of Defence the power to exempt activities for the purposes of national security. The certificate will mean the recent Environment Court ...
Finance Minister Grant Robertson has announced New Zealand will join the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action while attending APEC meetings in Chile. The objective of the 39 member Coalition is to share information and promote action to tackle climate change. It was formed in April this year, in ...
Ladies and gentlemen, NZCTU President Richard Wagstaff, members of respective unions – thank you for the invitation to speak to you today. This might be preaching to the choir, but the importance of trade unions in New Zealand’s historical arch is difficult to understate. And it is my belief that ...
"Let’s start by acknowledging that it has been a huge year. " Police Association Annual Conference James Cook Grand Chancellor Hotel Wellington Nau mai, haere mai. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, ka nui te mihi, ki a koutou katoa. President of the Police Association, Chris Cahill; Members of the Association and ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters and Minister of Defence Ron Mark have announced the New Zealand Government’s decision to again deploy a Royal New Zealand Air Force P-3K2 (P-3) maritime patrol aircraft to support the implementation of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions imposing sanctions against North Korea. New ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters says New Zealand continues to have serious concerns for peace and stability in north-east Syria. “Recent reports that hundreds of ISIS-affiliated families have fled from a camp are deeply concerning from a humanitarian and security perspective”, Mr Peters says. “While we acknowledge Turkey’s domestic security ...
Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor is warning travelling Kiwis to be vigilant as the high-season for the crop-eating brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB) is under way. “We’re on high alert to stop BMSB arriving in NZ. The high season runs until April 30 and we’ve strengthened our measures to stop stink ...
The Government is moving swiftly to change the law to improve the welfare and pastoral care of students living in university halls of residence and other tertiary hostels. Cabinet has agreed to several changes, including creating a new mandatory Code of Practice that sets out the duty of pastoral care ...
The Minister for Conservation Eugenie Sage has launched a new comprehensive trapping guide for community trappers to help them protect our native birds, plants and other wildlife, at Zealandia in Wellington today. ‘A practical guide to trapping’, has been developed by the Department of Conservation (DOC), and was launched during ...
Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter welcomes PHARMAC’s move to improve access to long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs). PHARMAC has today announced it will fund the full cost of Mirena and Jaydess for anyone seeking long term contraception, lifting previous restrictions on access to Mirena. “I welcome women having greater choices ...
The Government has approved the next stage of a major redevelopment of Taranaki Base Hospital, which will deliver new and improved facilities for patients. Health Minister Dr David Clark has announced details of a $300 million dollar project to build a new East Wing at the New Plymouth hospital. It ...
Extra funding will allow Rural Support Trusts to help farming families, says Minister for Rural Communities and Agriculture Damien O’Connor. “I know that rural families are worried about some of the challenges facing them, including the ongoing uncertainty created by the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak. “Those concerns sit alongside ongoing worries ...
Thank you for the opportunity to be here to present certificates to the 16 graduates who have completed a beekeeping course delivered by the Howard League. Let us start by acknowledging Auckland Prison’s Deputy Prison Director Tom Sherlock, and Acting Assistant Regional Commissioner of Corrections Northern Region Scott Walker - ...
Finance Minister Grant Robertson leaves this weekend to attend the APEC Finance Ministers meeting in Santiago, Chile. Discussions between APEC Finance Ministers at the meeting will include the effects of the current global economic uncertainty, risks for APEC economies and sustainable development of the region. While at APEC Grant Robertson ...
The Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio says for Pacific people, language can be a source of strength. It can help ground us and give us confidence. When we speak them, our languages provide us with an immediate and intimate access to our identity and our story - and ...
The Coalition Government has announced an action plan to improve the wellbeing of disabled New Zealanders by addressing inequalities in play, active recreation and sport. The initiative includes training to develop a workforce that understands the needs of children and young people with a range of impairments, advocacy for fit ...
The construction sector is being freed up to allow more homes to be built more quickly as the Government cuts through some of the red tape of the Building Act. “Every New Zealander deserves a warm, dry, safe home and old inefficiencies in the Building Act make building slow and ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has welcomed further details on the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall’s visit to New Zealand next month. Their Royal Highnesses will visit New Zealand from 17-23 November – their third joint visit to New Zealand and first in four years. They arrive in Auckland ...
Minister of State for Trade and Export Growth and Minister of Agriculture, Damien O’Connor, heads to Thailand today to attend the final Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Ministerial meeting, as negotiations enter their final stages. “The RCEP Agreement would anchor New Zealand in a regional agreement that covers 16 countries, ...
Pacific young people living in the Hawke’s Bay, Southland and Otago regions will have access to support services that have proved successful in helping young people find new earning and learning opportunities. “Tupu Aotearoa is about changing Pacific young peoples’ lives. Our young people are talented, they are smart, they ...
Introduction As the Minister for ACC I thank you all for the work that you do supporting New Zealanders in their literally most vulnerable moments. From those who hold people’s lives in their hands, to the people who research technique, technology and trends, your work is highly valued. A special ...
Notes prepared for speeches in Christchurch – Wednesday 9 October 2019 Today’s topic, “trends and opportunities for the New Zealand economy,” is certainly one getting a great deal of commentary at the moment. Looking across the media landscape lately you’ll notice we aren’t the only ones having this discussion. There ...
Minister of Health Dr David Clark and Associate Minister of Health Peeni Henare say this year’s World Mental Health Day theme is a reminder of why the Government’s work on mental health is so important. “This year the World Federation for Mental Health has made suicide prevention the main theme ...
Associate Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister Carmel Sepuloni will represent the government at Australia’s Meeting of Cultural Ministers in Adelaide this week. “This year’s meeting is special because New Zealand is expected to become an International Member of the Meeting of Cultural Ministers at this Australian forum,” Carmel Sepuloni said. “The meeting is an opportunity to ...
Aotearoa Climate Emergency (ACE), a climate change network, will host a conference in Wellington on 11 November (Armistice Day) to promote holding a Citizens Assembly in 2020, as a way of breaking the current political deadlock on treating climate ...
MediaWorks’ owners have called time after years of losses from its TV division. Sources say the company will announce it is for sale – if no buyers emerge, it will close within months.Three is facing the biggest crisis in its three decade history today, as its ownership will soon announce ...
Sam Brooks reviews Amazon Prime’s Modern Love, an anthology series based on the New York Times column dedicated to ‘love in all its forms’. A first date that ends up in the emergency room. A flagging marriage that finds new energy through tennis. The founder of a dating app who doesn’t ...
If we want to grow support for New Zealand’s aid, we need to get better at partnering with the ‘unlike-minded’ as well as the ‘like-minded’, and much better at telling people what we do with the money they give, says Josie Pagani, Executive ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Orsola De Marco, Astrophysicist , Macquarie University If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au.How are stars made? –Zali, age 8, Karkoo, South Australia. How are stars made? Well, stars are not ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gita Mishra, Professor of Life Course Epidemiology, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Queensland All women know to expect the time in life when their periods finish and they reach menopause. Many might even look forward to it. What many women don’t ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul McGreevy, Professor of Animal Behaviour and Animal Welfare Science, University of Sydney Since ancient times, horse behaviour, and the bond between horses and humans, has been a source of intrigue and fascination. The horse-lore that has accumulated over the centuries is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachael Wallis, Lecturer and Honorary Research Fellow, University of Southern Queensland A move to the country is often presented in popular culture as an idyllic life, a place where you can escape the pressures of the city. It’s in television shows such ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW The just-announced inquiry into Australia’s retirement income system ought to be anything but run-of-the-mill. Taking place 25 years after the introduction of compulsory superannuation, it provides an opportunity to either fix a broken system, or discard ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Allan McCay, Law Lecturer, University of Sydney The rise of artificial intelligence has led to widespread concern about the role of humans in the workplaces of the future. Indeed, Israeli historian, futurist and publishing sensation Yuval Noah Harari warns in his most ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jen Saunders, Phd candidate, University of Wollongong Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains images and names of deceased people. You leave Sydney and head for holidays on the South Coast. You plan to catch a quick surf, ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Clayton Mitchell denies accusations around a night out, food insecurity on the rise, and UK PM Boris Johnson secures deal with dubious prospects.NZ First MP Clayton Mitchell has got himself in a spot of late night bother in a Tauranga ...
As the rugby world wrestles with the new reality that players can, and will, be dismissed for accidental contact with an opponent’s head it's worth pondering the fate of three All Blacks not selected for the Ireland quarterfinal. ...
A new exhibition in Raetihi offers a rare opportunity to see early, colonialism-focused works by Wellington artist Barbara Strathdee, writes Pat Baskett. ...
Italy's Ambassador to New Zealand Fabrizio Marcelli responds to Newsroom stories - and The Detail podcasts - questioning the price of imported tinned tomatoes in light of reports of slave labour in the industry in his home country. ...
A measles outbreak in Samoa suspected to be responsible for the death of a one-year-old was “inevitable”, according to an expert who thinks NZ could have prevented it. ...
The big shock of the results in the weekend’s local elections was the unseating of Justin Lester as Wellington mayor. We invited him to pen a sort-of-valedictory.My three years as the mayor of Wellington ended on Sunday and I will forever remain grateful for the experience.I’m also acutely aware of ...
We review the entire country and culture of New Zealand, one thing at a time. Today, Alex Braae reviews a night spent on the Intercity overnight sleeper bus getting from Wellington to Auckland.The most important thing to understand about long haul bus travel is that it’s all about getting exactly ...
Britain and the EU have agreed new terms for divorce. But with the Conservatives’ Northern Irish support party unimpressed, can the British prime minister at last put an end to the interminable shitstorm?At last, a deal! A palpable deal! A path out of the endless brain-melt!“Where there is a will, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Government sources insist shock jock Alan Jones didn’t drive Thursday’s announcement of a cash payment to drought-striken farmers about to be turfed off their household support because they’d reached the four year time limit. They ...
The proposition that global warming driven by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is a risk that needs to be dealt with has achieved a large measure of agreement among policymakers. The proposition that it has to be dealt with right now and at great cost has no such consensus.One point ...
A bill to improve the pastoral care of students living in halls of residence has flown through its first reading in Parliament, thanks to cross-party support. ...
In this week's MediaRoom column: could MediaWorks close its TV operations altogether? And the Herald restructures its newsroom to remove a layer of management and shake up its investigative team. ...
Twenty-five young people who represent the future of the Asia-New Zealand relationship have been acknowledged as ‘ones to watch’, by the Asia New Zealand Foundation Te Whītau Tūhono. ...
The taboo that surrounds immigration and our refugee qouta, are two issues rising in New Zealand that need to start being given attention to challenge the fruit loops of the far left. ...
Winston Peters has been ordered to answer questions about whether he received a letter from MSD asking him to check details of his living arrangements, three years before discovering he'd been overpaid. ...
To celebrate 10 years since the start of New Zealand’s Next Top Model, our reality TV podcast The Real Pod is going to recap it week by week. Here are 10 of the most incredible revelations from the very first episode. 1) Colin Mathura-Jeffree was an emo kidThis was the moment ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s content by Dr Bryce Edwards.Terrorism bill Lydia Lewis and Dan Satherley (Newshub): Security expert backs new terror law proposal ...
Occupiers of the disputed land at Ihumātao have been shut out of talks with the government about finding a resolution, saying they haven’t had any direct contact with ministers in more than a month, writes RNZ‘s Te Aniwa Hurihanganu and Meriana Johnsen.The Māori King announced in September mana whenua had ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bronwyn Fancourt, Adjunct Research Fellow, University of New England Feral cats are wreaking havoc on our native wildlife, eating more than a billion animals across Australia every year. But managing feral cats and reducing their impacts on our threatened species is challenging, ...
Later this month, the national commemoration of the New Zealand Wars, known as Te Pūtake o Te Riri, is to be held in Taranaki. Local community activist Vivian Hutchinson looks at how a history of conflict has shaped our sense of citizenship and describes how some people in Taranaki are ...
New Zealand First MP Clayton Mitchell is demanding an apology from security guards who booted him out of a Tauranga bar on Saturday night, describing them as politically-motivated "buffoons". ...
New Zealand First MP Clayton Mitchell is demanding an apology from security guards who booted him out of a Tauranga bar on Saturday night, describing them as politically-motivated "buffoons". ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jerry Zhou, Lecturer, School of Medicine, Western Sydney University If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au.Does chewing gum stay inside you for years? – Olivia, aged 12, Australia. Great question, Olivia! ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liam Elphick, Adjunct Research Fellow, Law School, University of Western Australia In March last year, Frances McDormand won the Academy Award for Best Actress. In her acceptance speech, she drew attention to the female nominees in the room and left them with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peggy Kern, Associate professor, University of Melbourne The Portal follows six individuals who undergo a personal transformation from trauma and struggle to calmness, self-acceptance, and compassion towards others. These personal changes are intertwined with contemplations about the broader struggles facing humanity and ...
Many hill country farmers could be locked into low-return agriculture by government policy, with little chance of breaking the cycle, according to the main meat producers' lobby, Beef + Lamb New Zealand. ...
The Southern DHB has apologised and pledged to change practices after a report into a young woman’s complaint about treatment which included being stripped naked and left unattended in seclusion for 12 hours. Here she tells her story.I’d forgotten the Health and Disability Commission was about to publish its report. ...
In the Chief Ombudsman’s latest Annual Report, contacts for advice increased 29 percent, while more use was being made of guidance material, including the 23 new or updated guides that were published in the 2018/19 year. ...
Fletcher's new offsite home manufacturing facility could be producing two homes a day within a couple of years. But for the moment this high-tech factory is underwhelming. ...
National's leader Simon Bridges says his party will pull its support for the new anti-terrorism legislation if the minister doesn't meet with them next week and start negotiating in good faith. ...
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How far will the bitter and nasty right wing faction of old white men go in their determination to turn everything into another round of culture war?
Well, in the case of Karl Du Fresne (a creeping Jesus if there ever was one) it runs as far as going into bat for child molesters because, you know, white male.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/111003072/three-white-men-who-dominate-public-conversation
“…Now, Cardinal Pell. Did he sexually molest two choir boys in the sacristy of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne? A jury decided he did, …”
That is f**king right you pathetic piece of shit Du Fresne. he was convicted. By a jury. After a fair trial. But no, you think you should defend him because you are a screaming emotional cripple who clings to the authoritarian catholic church like dung to a blanket and would prefer kiddy fiddlers walk free to conservative white male clerics in positions of authority being held to account.
What a piece of shit .
They will always be with us, the issue is that they have platforms all over the place. Way out of proportion to their actual numbers. We need a means of de-platforming them.
I was just gob smacked that he would defend a convicted child molester purely because of who the molester is.
Agreed. Du Frsne’s misplaced sense of being a victimised white male has landed him in a very bad place with this one. He just can’t see what his own retrograde ideology has done to him.
a racist ageist rant I don’t think ethnicity or race are predeterminstic for kiddy fiddlers I think the last big nz case was a Samoan rugby coach Nor does that suggest such activities a predisposed to Polynesians as you are trying to suggest it is a white, make agre problem, looser
Is Netanyahu really “white”?
What is the definition of “white” these days anyway?
I thought the jewish people came from Arabia and eastern med?
Arabia’s not white is it? Nor eastern med?
It is very confusing
This near-silence from government on tax now looks a deliberate tactic to kill reform.
Looks like the Tax Group dissenting view will win.
Rubbish. All because one group is acting like kneejerk reactionary schoolchildren doesn’t require the other to respond to those self-indulgent wankers. You are demanding response before the considerations are made.
That is National’s tactics. Who the fuck are you.
National is leading the debate in the media and Parliament, and winning.
O’Connor won’t be able to counter Peters in Cabinet, and it will be lost on its impact outside the cities.
Robertson is lifting his bat on this one.
To me, I see one side going ten rounds before the first bell has been rung. They’ll exhaust themselves dancing and prancing round the canvas then, when the debate actually begins, they’ll have nothing new to say.
And they’ll get crucified as the self-interested tax dodging sacks they are (imo).
I don’t think the public remembers the shit these people sprout for months on end. Another scandal, another news cycle, gone in the hot wind it arrived on.
Let’s wait for the actual debate. We’re not all reeds in this wind.
Notice commentary from the Minister of Finance, Minister of Revenue, or Prime Minister in this segment last night on the tax proposals?
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/consultation-needed-timing-potential-capital-gains-tax-law-change-winston-peters?variant=tb_v_1
Me neither.
This actual debate is now.
We the Bleeple, I suspect your argument is fatally flawed.
The “self interested tax dodging sacks” are winning the argument currently, and because of that, Peters and NZF will hang the coalition out to dry on this.
By the time the PM has given the NZF required exemptions to farmers, small businesses and the NZX, the money left in the “fairness payments” bucket will be minimal and the Govt wont have $8b to give as income tax breaks. The working poor will feel let down once again.
And without any real money for the “fairness payments” whats the point of the CGT in the first place?
Then the Cullen Tax Group will be written off as Jacindas very expensive vanity project with no gains for anyone (except those on the committee)
Time will tell if your view is the one that comes to pass, or whether my view is the one which comes to pass
Ad,
What makes you think O’Connor will be advocating CGT for farmers? Given the PM’s statements about her concerns for farmers and small business, it will be much more likely that O’Connor will be singing a duo with Peters.
He won’t.
He was on RNZ this morning trying to defend against Natipnal’s inroads in rural communities on tax issues.
Peters will defend similar rural territory at Cabinet, but more harshly. Tax reform at a sectoral level is lost in the provinces and the remaining ground is in Auckland.
But think about the chidren! It has become a cliche’ because so often they and their parents are passed over as the tax parade goes by. A sick joke that refers to the cry so often heard and so little listened to.
Beneficiaries should not be limited in what they can earn. They should’t be checked every week and their benefit adjusted down. Every month okay and encourage it, adjust a little at the end of six months. Reward effort and determination.
Now they may be left with little for their work to spend after tax and removal of benefits and repayment of grants. How about the equivalent of $2 an hour and then transport and extra child care costs taking care of that.
Stick that in your pipes and smoke it you Taxed with Working Group.
National isn’t winning the debate – far from it. Just look at the comments on any stuff article that is anti the CGT and people are mostly all for the CGT. They’re also saying the stuff Labour would want them to say – that it’s not fair to tax income from work different to income from non-work.
Stuff is a left-wing website.
They’re also desperately hoping the government buys them, which is why there are so many articles promoting Ardern and this Labour government.
BM = right wing website.
“Stuff is a left-wing website.”
Fuck that’s funny.
The ‘average kiwi’ who owns there own home and is not interested in exploiting those who have no option but to rent is going to be better off with the tax adjustments.
Works for me and around 80% of the population.
Yes Kevin I never saw STUFF as left wing. lol lol
We really should be hearing this much more often and loudly.
Stuff’s about as left-wing as the late, not-at-all-lamented Margaret Thatcher.
So I took up your challenge and pulled out the latest Stuff article on the matter.
The comments are thoughtful, but the article makes the same point I am: the Minister responsible is not making any running on this at all.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/111028930/sir-michael-cullen-steps-back-into-politics-with-debatable-claims-about-cgt#comments
Why leave any government-supporting debate to Dr Cullen?
The government will not win this policy issue unless it fights for it.
i checked the latest Stuff article on it.
Featured Cullen, made same points as me.
Comments section was thoughtful but ovrerall v negative.
Maybe. But if so, it’s going to look like a victory for National and the angry, middle-class media.
All of whom vote.
Ardern looks like she prefers two terms ahead of tax reform.
Probably better not to start flinching before you see the enemy’s fire.
If Labour wimp out on the CGT they’ll set us back yet another generation.
Ad I disagree.
I think they knew the right would go OTT.
The Government are giving the opposition 2 months of rope, and they are doing a very nice job of hanging themselves.
To not pay something on a fortune is hard to do when the theme is “Fairness”
So ordinary people are going… “Wait up.. I pay on every dollar, and they want to pay nothing? Now that’s not fair”
The Right can’t defend the indefensible, so they are losing friends and support.
The Government can come in and suggest serious change in April, which would have seemed impossible before this.
This woman is remarkable. She has made New Zealanders examine “Fairness”
It has opened minds to what have been accepted patterns of behaviour and helped put a new view and perspective on some accepted forms of greed.
Thank you J A. We are seriously considering how some are taxed and some are not and are ready to change that.
But then you get this quick change of tack from the Hosk today over at the fish wrap:
“The soft bigotry of low expectation.” And that is the aspiration of this government, isn’t it? You don’t want to turn up for a work interview? No problem…………………..”
Kat who do you get that from? No Government website. Just yesterday there were 20 newly employed with training in place to plant manuka for the honey industry. This is full time and leading to qualifications, which will assist the next tranche.
The right have always blamed the unemployed. Don’t help them do it. Cheers
They start these lies and hope they will be repeated.
Patricia, you are correct the “fish wrap” is not a govt website, it is however the conveyor of low brow commentary and political bias on a daily basis.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12209999
My comment in reply to yours was to highlight your point that while the opposition and its poodles are busy hanging themselves on the rope from the TWG discussion, a quick change of tack in the media, namely from the “fish wrap” appears necessary as a brief diversion.
That is a good reminder Kat. I should read things twice.. I’m getting old!! lol
How can we track the assets of Aunty Young, Hangry Hooten, Bury Souper et al? How vested are these interests. The public has the right to know.
Soper, Young, etc etc are all far, far to untypical of average New Zealand to have a clue what the public actually think – they are engaged in a giant confidence trick, where being an old, financially secure, white and old of touch person who are convinced that interviewing each other and establishment vested interests is presented as being in touch with the zeitgeist of the nation.
In fact, they just represent narrow sectional interests – and the decline of MSM makes their views of little importance anyway.
That is not a mistake anyone in Parliament makes.
Yes Ad parliamentarians do make mistakes.
However, many on the right have vested interests and these will be examined as the debate proper starts.
Those on the left with large assets (Jones) will have to declare they are not letting those influence their attitudes.
A problem to consider is the fairness of tax on reparations to Maori, however, they seldom sell, so there should be a way through that.
When the Government produces tables showing how large holders of capital will be affected compared to those with basic or no assets, there will be an epiphany.
We are discussing the % of tax paid on earnings from all sources.
A whole industry has been developed to assist the asset rich to avoid tax.
The comparisons will galvanize opinion IMO.
I know they’re irrelevant, but we’re not all trained to think critically or investigate multiple sources. It would be of use to the public to see just how these Nat mouthpieces have self-interest at heart.
P.S. Whatever happened to Swill-Cone? Surely CGT has caused more neurosis to report on.
Landlords care – we mean it maaaaaaaan.
“Amid the hype around the unusual ad, what’s been overlooked is that someone is currently paying to rent the property. This is someone’s home.”
https://i.stuff.co.nz/business/111051624/heres-the-dirty-secret-lurking-in-that-nasty-house
A rare moment of conscience from Susan Edmunds. Perhaps the industry is finally getting the wake-up all it and the country so desperately needs.
looks to me the industry is advertising the fact that literally they can own a dumb and find someone desperate enough to rent it.
Unfortunately in most situations those that do live in places in that state would not welcome an order to vacate. With falling available rentals and masses of applicants “You’ll need to find another place” is bleak news for those previously obliged to settle for sub-standard options of that ilk.
Raising the standards of NZ rentals and tapping into a bit of that cash cow milk are great initiatives. I’m concerned that our government are ill prepared for the equal and opposite forces these initiatives will initiate.
I think a trending increase in the number of people that are eligible for and waiting for Government housing is an indication that my fears are not ill-founded.
No they won’t want to vacate and the scum bloodsucker leech landlord won’t fix it up to MINIMUM standards. Tough one hmmm
There are plans afoot to address your concerns Marty. The govt have employed inspectors, they’ve started with the govt housing stock. I think these people will move on to policing compliance amongst the private sector.
Just as tenants have their tribunal outcomes made public, landlords do too. The bloodsuckers you speak of would hate nothing more than having to pay a tenant and the govt $5000 because the wind whistles through their let. It would be good if via non compliance fines, the dept was almost self funding.
I think the slumlord tally will plummet. These are of course all good things.
But….as I say, there will be repercussions, we could and should be prepared for them.
The scum are upgrading their hovels because they have to.
Thing is, people have been living in these hovels because they can afford them ($200)* but the scum are chucking them out while they do $10/20k worth of work. And when these not quite hovels anymore do come back on the rental market, the scum have jacked the rents ($370)* beyond the former tenant’s means.
(anecdata)*
I seem to recall that the Government, as landlord (via Housing Corp) also has rented out substandard dwellings to desperate folk.
Maybe the trick would to bring their own properties up to scratch (apparently they had heaps of empty ones too) and rent those out first, before bitching about private landlords.
Maybe they could do both those things Hungry Hangnail.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU1903/S00049/student-climate-change-strike-gets-backing-from-gov-minister.htm
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/government-led-science-genetic-modification-climate-minister?variant=tb_v_1
Well, this raises the question as to whether NZ (?) scientists should be funded to undertake scientific research into other uses of GE to tackle other problems such as pest control. Or is it a matter of the end justifies the means? Sounds a bit too much like National to me …
If GE will transform pasture farming, protecting it from the effects of climate change and ensuring farm-resilience and sustainability, surely industry driven by the market and smart farmers, will invest in the technology.
Surely.
Scientific evidence is one main input into a healthy debate that looks at risks, benefits and economic returns as well. In a holistic way that looks at the whole of society and not just at a few fractions with invested interests (!) or ideological agendas.
the trouble being you cannot model the risks ie they are irreducible eg Nalimov
We can say that the nature of change in biology is random, since it is
impossible to find an expression for a sufficiently detailed description
that is considerably shorter than the “most complete” description of the
observed phenomenon. In other words, it is not possible to construct a
model of a generator of mutations in terms of ordinary cause-effect relations,
i.e., it is not possible to find the causes that unambiguously
generate the full diversity of observed mutations. Having found that the
nature of change is random, we are greatly surprised that there does not
exist an ordinary probabilistic description of the observed phenomena.
An ordinary statistical description of phenomena is possible if, on the
basis of the results of observations carried out on a small sample, we can
calculate the distribution parameters which make it possible to obtain an
idea of the behavior of the complete sequence of phenomena. In the case
of biological changes, observations made on a small sequence of
phenomena do not yield information about the subsequent behavior of
the system. In such a case, averaged characteristics have no significance.
The individual manifestations of the phenomena are important, irrespective
of their probability of occurrence.
Thank you Stephen,
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/league/110982655/stephen-kearney-goes-meet-free-as-warriors-coach-builds-dynasty-at-warriors
Good article on plant-based diet in NZH today:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=12209282
I liked it for it’s simple format – ask five experts about the health implications compared to conventional diet. No brow beating, no ethical jabs, just a health focus.
I don’t really care what helps people eat less meat, some just get defensive when the ethics arguments are put up – so having health argued by several professionals is very useful.
Nice one Steve Kearney. I ran some of the sideline stuff for the Warriors games once, Steve’s huge!
Interesting… thanks. Food for thought. No.. plants for thought.
stuffed it up – the headline – didn’t they. Meet-free! Was that a Freudian slip from a meat-eater?
Yes noticed that too grey!
Thanks for posting this mauī.
Yes, v.g. Stephen Kearney and family!
It is very encouraging seeing how more and more NZers are understanding and experiencing the health and environmental benefits of plant-based whole-food eating and it is attracting less of the knee-jerk fear reaction that it used to from threatened individuals in our mainstream ‘animal-slaughter-dependent’ country.
The knee-jerk fear reaction of the thousand or more households in my burg dependent on the meat industry for their livelihoods will probably be along the lines of WTF are we going eat.
Nice illustration – cheers.
Do you think they are fearing for their livelihoods, or what they are going to eat, or both!?
A little bit of knowledge would help them in either case.
The majority are seasonal workers so they know all about both fearing for their livelihoods and how tough it is to feed themselves during the off-season.
This appears to be going a little off-topic from the thread Joe. To bring it back in: seems then that they would be gainfully employed in plant based food production when the ‘vegan-green-peril’ fully takes over.
By then they will have learnt a full range of tasty vegan recipes, other than ‘lettuce and mayo’. They will be healthier and realise how much more affordable it is to feed themselves and their families on a meat-free, dairy-free diet.
I reckon I’ve heard something along those lines before. Oh, that’s right, like Douglass and Prebble before them, Bolger and Richardson assured us that new employment opportunities would abound…and then they proceeded to destroy literally thousands of jobs and tore the heart out of my community. Ain’t gonna happen again.
Yeah good point. The freezing works in several small towns are the major employers.
For myself, I don’t think NZ is going to lose all its dairy/meat production but we’ll have to bring herds down to carrying capacity, and diversify for resilience sake… but ultimately, rotational grazing is the HOW TO of sustainable meat production, with a few tweaks (reduce/remove salts and cides, replant many trees, biodiversity earthworks and water storage, on-site production of feedstock, trees on anything > 15 degrees…) NZ could lead the way in regenerative agriculture.
We are in pole position to create the best food in the world due to our distance from everything, good soils and high rainfall.
Once we’ve learned to keep and grow soil and capture and slow rain (they’re connected), we will not only be productive, but resilient.
I can’t see veganism as the future. I can see diets altering to encompass more plants both for human and planetary health. The freezing worker will still be here, but maybe not so many. there will be more work with trees, bees, aquaculture, fruits, nuts, medicines…
Its very different isn’t it? People making an informed choice about what they eat may certainly disrupt our ‘all eggs in one basket’ (pun intended) animal slaughter industry to some extent. Its hardly comparable to an ideological elite’s top-down imposition of neoliberalism on our lives.
Yes AB
We do need to ‘de-platform’ the ‘right wing angry middle class’ among us.
They only add anger and absolutely no positive resolution to any issue that we need to discuss with “a cool head”.
If they can’t make ‘constructive comments’ – they should be banned.
This was a very good article over on the Daily Blog that I commented on with constructive ways to “define who best to vote for over one issue we need to discuss.
So with the tax reform issue we need a similar voting platform to make our current leaders and (candidates) to define what they will vote for.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/03/06/guest-blog-bryan-bruce-planned-student-protest-gets-my-vote/
We need ‘all of us adults shamed’ into action!!!
As we are the problem currently, – since we are lazy and just vote for these lazy useless Governments; – who just sit on the fence and do nothing; – all while the planet burns.
I am ashamed as I should be so I am 100% behind our young for standing up to show that we need to also get off our butts and get in the action also.
Vote out any lazy politician and Local Body councillor who refuses to stand up and join the fight to save our planet.
As this year being our ‘Local body Elections time’ we need to hold all those ‘potential Local Body candidates to account on climate change!!!
We need to have them all sign a questionnaire on climate change, and publish their plans to “commit” to vote for climate change!!!!
Or the public should not vote for them.
“self preservation is the strongest principal’ – https://www.icomos.org/venicecharter2004/petzet.pdf
I sit on the Southland Regional Council, clean green 🙂
cleangreen
You are talking about making sure that politicians do what the people and the land need them to. And I think that is what a working democracry should be about.
We thought we had one, that was at least tottering along sometimes, and then making changes and getting better. Then the whole thing was overthrown by cutting government away and its regulations (the fat) and supposedly introducing a lean, fit model. Only it leaned too far and fell over! Hah.
Now we need participatory democracy. The people need to form a group of practical people looking to the future, each one with an interest in one of the major drivers of an
enterprise society perhaps transport, agriculture in general including horticulture, manufacturing in general, employment and understanding thoroughly the way that Stats gathers and presents figures for official is there a Household Labour Survey and why or not? Education and its value today, technology spread smothering traditional writing and communication, also what is driving the politicians, advisors, bureaucrats – who yanks their strings, provides the models they follow?
Then we get a picture of what is happening. You have reliable, informed academics who will give you an ear and perhaps address a meeting of keen learners. Then we can draw up rough plans for what is needed, bring the figures in to fill them out, make reasonable estimates of cost, look at who or what would be affected by it, perhaps that site is environmentally vulnerable, perhaps that local landowner would object even if it is public land, even if it is a necessary step for the good of the community. How can he/she be brought into the loop, be smoozed?
There was an interview this morning with a Mayor on the West Coast. He and one of his cohort organised some work without going through the required steps.l
He said they did it because it looked as if there was going to be a repeat of the flood that washed out their sewage ponds. They managed to avoid this and have done apparently a fairly good job of protection with a stopbank or something.
People have to do this, get full information, and then press hard for necessary steps. You cleangreen appear to be doing this in Gisborne. No doubt you have worked out a case for getting quick address to your problems, with steps that even the most reluctant decision maker must notice are straightforward and cogent.
I was reading a bit from David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell.
He starts a new Part with Ecclesiastes 9:11 –
So I guess we just hope our time will last long enough to give us the chance.
De-platforming needs to be non-coercive or else we become the thing we abhor.
Lol. ‘There was blame on both sides’.
To take away their platform in the kindest possible way?
After all it surely isn’t so urgent that we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings!
I’m all for hurting their feelings, their wallets (especially) and anything else that works – short of violence or suspension of the rule of law.
Excellent.
I reckon bugger elections and democracy clean green, you and bunch of teenagers ( preferably suitably left and woke ) just determin the criteria and what constitutes correct thinking and then select who should be in council and in parliament
That, is called the National party!
Nandor Tanczos discusses the permaculture hui coming in April, in our food forest, in Riverton.
https://www.accessradio.org/Player.aspx?eid=64c26ccb-14ee-4074-9ae2-7085737b5109
Well done Robert.
Lol. But the same thing would happen in The States. Or here, but with perhaps slightly less force.
More from the Gallow at Oxford. Absolutely superb.
Thanks mauī, again I appreciate your posts today.
This is fascinating and I hope some of our right wing trolls who are fond of spouting their version of the truth here get an opportunity to watch (and think about) this.
Meooow🐈
You knew it didn’t you, that Mike Hosking would go all orgasmic about Paula Bennett?
That it’d be about benefits?
Paula’s gang patch.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D07E3DQU0AAWAy3?format=jpg&name=large
I love lead? I guess working with Simon would make you ask people to shoot you.
🤣🤣🤣
Is that the sartorial equivalent of retweeting yourself?
Farmers need protection from livestock rustling.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1903/S00034/nz-first-pushes-for-tougher-livestock-rustling-measures.htm
Government is looking at it. The miniature horses deaths are an indication of a certain level of callous skulduggery that can exist in rural areas.
Was rife on the East Coast 1980’s to early 1990’s basically organised crime, some of the Maori Trust Blocks got hammered, one block at Te Arararoa lost 100 x breeding cows and a Station in the Waikura Valley lost 300 x 2 tooth breeding ewes, this ain’t just the odd animal for the freezer.
Truck @ trailers required for these sort of numbers.
I imagine Mr Shaw may be getting a little bit nervous.
After almost a year of the MSM ignoring the total stuff up by his Department in their attempt to hold a Census Stuff is starting to run stories about it.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/111052779/365-days-and-still-counting-census-2018-results-nowhere-to-be-seen
Young James has spent all that time with a blindfold on and his hands jammed over his ears while he, ever more desperately, claims that everything will turn out all right, and anyway “it wasn’t my fault”.
Well tough luck James. It was your fault and your refusal to do anything about it should cause you sacking.
Have a look in the linked article. You don’t have to accept my opinion.
As Auckland University Statistician Andrew Sporle says
“”It’s a bit of a disaster, we don’t know how bad, but we know it’s a disaster.”
He said it appeared Stats NZ’s follow through after the initial response, which was adequate, had faltered.”
In other words it was what happened after the Census that has caused the havoc and Shaw is totally responsible for that.
Shaw also claims that it will not be possible to arrange a Census in 2021. What that means is that he, and his Department, have wasted 12 months that could have been put into organizing it.
Economist Brian Easton has also commented on Shaw’s Shambles.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/111044133/census-mess-can-be-resolved-with-a-new-one-in-2021
Brian, who certainly doesn’t lean to the right says that the Census is unlikely to be accepted by a Court as meeting the statutory obligations that exist. He is also quite scathing about the argument that it is impossible to run a proper one in 2021.
As he says.
“Stats NZ has claimed that it takes three years (instead of two years and nine months) to run a new census. But I am told that if it uses the existing good parts of the 2018 census with the 2013 enumerator system, it will take 18 months to organise.
So it could start the task as late as this September. All it requires is leadership, although it may be sensible to bring back (sometimes out of retirement) the team that ran the 2013 enumeration.”
Well Mr Shaw is supposedly the leader. Unfortunately he has demonstrated he is anything but a good one.
There is a lovely old US saying about people like James Shaw.
“Piss or get off the pot”.
As most people will recognize it means stop procrastinating an do something.
Mr Shaw appears to be incapable of doing anything. He should resign.
If he won’t then the PM should follow the US idiom. She should sack him.
SFW, we managed to cope with a five year delay.
Now there is a man who isn’t afraid to demonstrate his antipathy to a politician.
You do realize that the delay we “managed to cope with”, and which was 2 years not 5 years by the way, was due to the Christchurch earthquake?
Now you are quite happy to delay the Census by 5 years and happily go from 2013 to 2123 to get any sensible results.
I am not a great enthusiast for Mr Shaw as a Minister of the Crown, as people who read what I say about him here may be aware. To put it briefly I think he has been useless.
However I really wouldn’t go as far as you do and describe his activities as being a great deal more of a disaster than the Earthquake was.
Alwyn you are all wrong .We actually rate Shaw and don’t rate your opinion.
The organisation was done by National. But you know that and you are redirecting.
That’s nice dear. I’m sure that you absolutely adore the dishy Mr Shaw.
What do you rate him at on a scale of 0 to 10?
Actually don’t bother. If someone wants to be a Minister of the Crown I don’t care how he is rated by the ladies. I only care about whether he can do the job and Shaw has been an abject failure.
But you know that don’t you?
Shock! – I agree with you about the Census stuff up.
Not ready to blame JS like you have though. Being a Green supporter, I will try very hard to understand what his part in this was – let’s see how he handles it when the results are published.
I fear, like Brian Easton, that any fudged results they manage to cook up will not satisfy a Court that they are of a legally sufficient quality. The thing a true leader would have done was to recognize that possibility immediately after the results were in doubt and start a parallel path of preparing to rerun the exercise in 2021. This could have been done at the same time as they were trying to patch up the data.
They should also have tried to quickly get more people into the field to try and contact the people who were missed. Chase up those people who had done the job in 2013 and recruit as many of them as possible. They at least had once been trained.
It would appear that Shaw, in the time between becoming Minister and the Census didn’t satisfy himself that it was going to be on track on the day. He still seems to be in a complete state of denial even a year after the fiasco. It was his job to ask questions of the Officials and satisfy himself that the answers made sense.
Alywin own the census stuff up as the Nats, which it was or f off
You did notice that MR (or Dr) Sporle said that the problems only occurred after the Census date. Up till then things were going OK. If all the problems started 5 or 6 months after the current lot took office an attempt to blame it all on National is only something a person like you or the current PM would attempt.
The pm doesn’t do that. She always picks up responsibility for her patch.
I didn’t read what your wrote about James Shaw. I will if I have time. I had read that the f ups were down to previous govt, but realize that that may not be the case
Ok alywyn, just read the article. You have selectively used quotes to implicate Shaw. The review of what went wrong is due mid 2019. The follow up you referred to would have been designed under national. I gave you the benefit of the doubt, but actually you were spinning.
Remember about the boy who cried wolf
Actually Ardern did claim it was all National’s fault.
That was her first reaction. It also ignored the fact that National increased the money to run the Census from about $90 million in 2013 to $120 million in 2018.
Is that really a case of them being cheap skates?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/109424122/prime-minister-blames-national-for-census-debacle-says-stats-nz-warned-them-of-budgetary-constraints
That’s funny. Using the name “Shaw” and “leader” in the same sentence.
He’s got his incompetent predecessor to blame.
I suggest you see my comment at 14.3.1.
I guess I must include you in the foolish little trio rather than only the duo of fools.
Maybe he’s wrong wally. I mean when Pricksmith stuffs things up they stay stuffed up.
Fantastic that alwyn has been reduced to complaining about the census.
Statistically, statistics are not something a lot of people care about.
Hah, bloody hah.
I have been complaining about the stuffed up Census since a few weeks after it took place. The second I saw the percentage of the population that had responded I thought that it couldn’t possibly be rectified.
Lots of people on this site claimed that everything was OK and that of course they would get usable numbers.
Well they were wrong and an awful lot of other people are now saying the same things that I have been saying for the best part of a year.
You may not care about statistics, or the Census.
That is because you are an ignorant fool. Read Easton’s article that I linked to and then ask yourself how they can possibly settle on electorate boundaries, the number of Maori seats, allocations to DHBs or money going to schools without a valid Census? The law requires that they get it right.
Claiming that people, and by implication you, aren’t interested merely demonstrates how stupid you really are. But then your comments show that on almost every occasion you burst into song here.
I think they could make reasonable guesses on DHBs. Maori electorates won’t have changed much because the previous government made sure they couldn’t get ahead. Schools might be an issue. It’s a pity the Nats didn’t collect data on all the money flooding into the country via property investment.
” Maori electorates won’t have changed much”.
Of course not. You aren’t concerned in the slightest that if they use the figures they have there may be one less Maori Electorate?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/111003171/mori-electorate-seat-at-risk-due-to-census-2018-debacle?rm=m
And it doesn’t really matter that there are tens of millions of dollars that may be mis-allocated to each of the DHBs.
It is good to see that Jimmy Shaw isn’t concerned though. He apparently prefers to be in a position of “I know nothing”.
It seems to be the case that he hasn’t even shown enough interest to ask for a briefing on the matter.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/111074980/stats-minister-james-shaw-yet-to-take-advice-on-key-census-2018-risks
I suppose he is far to busy arranging his next little jaunt to attend a conference on how to fly less which will be held in some exotic far distant place.
Heh Bozo. The only real job you have is Statistics and their major task is the Census. Do your job you lazy sod.
The hard part is going to be generating the political will.
.
“Right now, we have about ninety per cent or ninety-five per cent of the technology we need,” Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, told me. In a series of papers, Jacobson and his colleagues have laid out “roadmaps” to a zero-emissions economy for fifty states, fifty-three towns and cities, and a hundred and thirty-eight other countries, with a completion date of 2050. Just as in the Democrats’ Green New Deal, the central element of these roadmaps (and others) is converting the electric grid to clean energy by shutting down power stations that rely on fossil fuels and making some very large investments in wind, solar, hydroelectric, and geothermal facilities. Jacobson said this could be completed by 2035, which is only five years beyond the target set out in the Green New Deal. At the same time, policymakers would introduce a range of measures to promote energy efficiency, and electrify other sectors of the economy that now rely heavily on burning carbon, such as road and rail transport, home heating, and industrial heating. “We don’t need a technological miracle to solve this problem,” Jacobson reiterated. “‘The bottom line is we just need to deploy, deploy, deploy.”
http://archive.li/kUiGN
Yup.
Convert all land-based energy use to electric. Short flights go to electric, long-haul will need biofuels. There’s a good chance shipping will find small modular nuclear reactors to be the best option.
I can’t think of a better way to boost the economy than doing all the R&D, manufacturing and infrastructure work needed to make that happen.
Hear hear!
I wonder how the people of the bay of plenty would have felt if the rena was nuclear powered.
That disaster created my favorite meme (that I made)
Rocks Tar Economy.
I was surprised when it didn’t take off 😀
Reactors for use in shipping are a tenth the size or less of land-based electricity generation reactors. So a Fukushima or Chernobyl or Three Mile Island accident has negligible probability of happening, simply because the thermal runaway issues are exponentially related to reactor size.
In a ship, there’s always coolant available right there. Unlike Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima which all had loss of cooling as a key part of what went wrong.
The radioactive material is always inside a seriously grunty containment vessel, so dropping a steaming pile of uranium on the seabed just aint gonna happen. The worst case scenario is breaking off the coolant lines going in and out of the containment vessel so seawater can go in and out of the containment vessel. Which will release a very small amount of radioactive material with the initial flushing out of the coolant that will very quickly dilute and dissipate.
After that, to release radioactive material, they will need to be dissolved into the seawater. The concentration of uranium in seawater is already quasi-saturated, so it’s going to be just barely above background levels.
So no, there wouldn’t suddenly be three-headed fish on the menu in the BOP. By any rational assessment, the worst-case ecosystem damage done by a hypothetical nuke-powered Rena would be much less than the actual damage done by the actual bunker oil spilled by the actual Rena.
But we’ve had decades of overhyped scare stories about the nuclear boogeyman, so rational assessment probably aint gonna count for squat if we’re ever called on to figure out how we feel about nuke-powered ships in our ports.
edit: Here’s an industry puff-piece on existing marine use of nuclear propulsion. Glossy spin to be sure, but it’s still a useful illustration of the scope of what’s already out there.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-nuclear-applications/transport/nuclear-powered-ships.aspx
Evidently the servicing on the cooling system had been neglected at Fukushima.
Apparently at Chernobyl they were doing some kind of test that involved fucking with the cooling system.
Three Mile Island had sequential failures of cooling components. IIRC, starting with pumps, then a valve stuck open. Shitty operator interface design contributed to operators not correctly understanding what was going wrong and then taking incorrect steps to try to fix it.
I can’t imagine the servicing of a third world flagged merchant fleet will be anything to write home about.
Or servicing Third World Nuclear Power Plants ?
Thanks
I can’t see that we’re ever actually gonna be called on the consider the question.
Oil prices would have to be up over $200/barrel, maybe $300, to make nukes look economically attractive to shipping companies. The only way I see that happening is a worldwide carbon price of at least $300/tonne CO2e that captures shipping as well. Maybe more like $600 or $1000/tonne. On an industry that is remarkably successful at avoiding getting taxed and regulated.
Sigh. We’re all gonna fry.
What do you reckon of this?
A ticking time bomb?
Seems somewhat risky. 🤣
When you consider the Soviet/ Russian Nuclear accidents over the yrs, it’s a ticking time bomb waiting to go pop like Chernobyl or like their Nuke Subs or Ships. Just google earth/ maps of the Northern Fleet dockyards and see all their Nuclear Subs and their Cruisers in various states of this disrepair.
I think even Greenpeace has a piece on this wee monster of ticking time bomb?
Greenpeace’s knee-jerk anti-nuclear-power stance is one of the reasons I’ve gone off them.
To me, closing down an already built running nuclear power station somewhere like Germany, just because nuclear, makes no sense at all. For starters, the big environmental costs have already been incurred, like the original build, irradiation of the guts of it on startup etc. The ongoing marginal environmental cost of continued operation is pretty minimal.
Then there’s the way shortfalls in electricity production from shutting a nuke is likely to be made up by burning coal. Which is vastly more environmentally damaging than nuclear, even counting Fukushima and Chernobyl and TMI and all the others.
Yet Greenpeace is right at the forefront of demanding nuke power plants be shut down. It’s quite the environmental and climate own goal.
I do agree that shutting down the German Nuclear Power plants is just plain crazy and as you said doesn’t make any sense at all. But I do think Greenpeace concerns on this wee ticking time bomb is quite valid, given the track record of the Russians to run a Nuclear Power safety.
Gets around the earthquake issue.
What about the Tsunami issue?
Wouldn’t even notice it.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/03/11/tsunami.cruise.ships/index.html
But that thing will always be close to shore, won’t it? That’s where the power is needed.
Can’t see it motoring out to open water at the drop of a hat.
You can have it anchored 10k offshore and just run a power cable back.
Treat it like an oil rig, the Taranaki rigs are a long way offshore.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/map/8934/taranaki-oil-and-gas-fields-2006
BM, did you ever see the footage from the Jap Coast Guard Vessel (about the same size of one of the RNZN OPV’s) riding the Tsunami waves some 50 plus km’s offshore? The ship was lucky to get to the crest of wave and nearly didn’t have a enough herbs to get over the second and third waves.
Cables, ok.
In the event of an accident, atmospheric dispersal of radioactive debris in a low population area (at sea for instance) might be less harmful to humans, but dispersal by ocean current would be disastrous for marine life and coastal communities, potentially for thousands of kilometres.
True, but if it’s close inshore when a Tsunami hits. I wouldn’t want to be near that thing in a month of Monday’s, even if I had a bucket full of iodine pills while wear a noddy suit at the same time.
I think Andre below, pretty well sums up my thoughts on this.
Fukushima was a fuck up evidently the cooling systems weren’t serviced properly and helped cause the melt down, stupid place to build s Nuclear Plant – Stupid Yanks Again ?
The cooling systems were taken out by the tsunami …. they were badly / cheaply sited .
The general concept has some merits. It’s an example of where the rooskies have kept going with reactor developments and may be in a pretty good position if a market for small modular reactors ever develops.
The reactors are essentially the same design the rooskies have successfully used for quite a while in icebreakers. They’re modestly sized (150MW thermal, 35MW electrical compared to Chernobyl reactors being 3200MW thermal 1000MW electrical each), so if shit goes down with them it won’t be much shit.
Things I don’t like about them are: Russian engineering and manufacturing and respect for safety and the environment ain’t the greatest, they’re old design pressurised water reactors that rely on active control systems working at all times, and PWRs produce a lot of radioactive waste relative to power generated.
There are newer reactors designs that respond to complete loss of control and power by depowering using the laws of physics rather than active control, which I find much more comfortable. There’s also newer designs that essentially burn their waste rather than requiring somewhere very secure to store the waste for a very long time (maybe rooskies don’t care about secure storage for the waste).
So I’ve got quite mixed thoughts on that particular application of nuclear tech.
Should add, the cost looks way up there. Wikipedia reckons the project cost will be around USD336 million for a 70MW electricity output. That’s around $5/watt of electrical output. Although since it’s Murmansk, they’re probably taking quite a bit of its output directly as heat.
For comparison, utility-scale wind and solar are on the order of $0.50/watt.
Not a viable option then?
Not that I could see Kiwis excepting the concept of a floating nuclear power plant.
Any government that allowed this would be hung drawn and quartered.
Never ever ever gonna be viable for on-land generation in New Zealand. We’ve got so much wind, geothermal and maybe even solar if needed that we just won’t need something that expensive and politically unpopular on land.
The alien unicorns will have arrived and started excreting working fusion plants out their back ends long before we tap out our renewables potential.
But if the world ever gets serious about eliminating greenhouse gas emissions, we may have a choice of either accepting nuke-powered ships in our ports or shutting ourselves off from the rest of the world.
To be honest BM, I don’t think Nuclear Power would be practical in NZ from a risk, safety and cost POV. A Nuclear Power station would’ve got done in the 50’s-late 60’s if NZ’s history in the Atomic age is anything to by.
but not now as the muppets in Treasury would have a fit, before the anti Nuke mob even got their finger out of their digit to organise any protest. Hell the Treasury Muppets are already having fits over the 20B DCP over 15- 20yrs last announce by the “No Mates Party and reconfirm by the current Government, so you think they will support this?
Yeah right mate.
You haven’t seen the state of technical maintenance, on every, FOC ship we have taken over. Except for AHTSV’s.
Sometimes the paintwork looks good, and often the paperwork.
The quality of technical maintenance on the equipment and engines, has been, without exception, abysmal.
Let your average cost cutting “Flag of Convenience” shipping company manage a nuclear plant!
You must be fucking, joking!
Hydrogen is really the only promising technology, at present, for ship fuels.
It has it’s own dangers, however.
Note though, a diesel ship has at least 30 times less emissions per ton.mile, than trucks.
Complexity of operation and maintenance is a very good argument against quite a few classes of reactor design. Including all the pressurised water and light water reactor designs I’m aware of. Ironically, those designs are also the easiest to get regulatory approval for, since they’re based on legacy designs with long histories. Most expensive to actually build, too, because of the complexity, but the easier approval process counteracts that. That roosky nukes-on-barge thing BM linked to is one of those legacy type PWRs.
Several of the outfits working on newer next-gen reactors are specifically targeting outright eliminating maintenance requirements and simplifying operation to the point of making the reactor itself basically a “big battery” from the users point of view. At least the nuke thermal part, anyway, converting heat to electricity or mechanical power won’t ever be quite that simple. The containment vessel for all the radioactive bits would be all in one unit, fueled at the factory for several years of operation. Then when it’s depleted, the entire unit is pulled out and replaced with a refurbished refuelled unit, and the old one goes back to the factory for refurb and refuel.
If you can be bothered scrolling through the big article linked below you’ll find brief descriptions of several of these efforts. But none of them look anywhere near becoming commercial reality.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/small-nuclear-power-reactors.aspx
https://www.ship-technology.com/features/featureis-there-a-future-for-hydrogen-powered-ship-propulsion-5731545/
https://grist.org/article/a-ferry-that-runs-on-hydrogen-fuel-cells-is-coming-to-san-francisco/
Safe, storage of large amounts of hydrogen is an issue, but scientists reckon it is, solvable. Note: The dangers of storing large quantities of gas or petrol.
Making hydrogen, of course requires a large source of sustainable electricity. Which New Zealand has the capability.
Unless we get the Holy Grail, Fusion, which is decades away, if ever. Continued nuclear energy for transport, remains unlikely.
Handling hydrogen is way way more difficult and dangerous than handling liquid fuels. Hydrogen embrittlement of metals, the way seals have to be metal-to-metal contact because hydrogen permeates through and reacts with polymers so quickly, hydrogen’s very wide range of explosive concentrations in air, the way hydrogen fires are nearly invisible to the naked eye (they put out a shitload of UV though)…
The round trip efficiency of using electricity to split water for hydrogen to mechanical work is very low. I don’t see us having enough excess of electricity any time soon to make that route to widespread use of hydrogen viable.
I reckon what might make hydrogen viable is if any of the teams working on photocatalytic hydrogen production has a breakthrough, or one of the lab methods of generating hydrogen from hydrocarbons without releasing CO2 has a breakthrough. One of the most interesting efforts in that area is bubbling methane up through molten metal, which releases nearly pure hydrogen and the carbon becomes a solid floating on top of the molten metal. Presumably like a sooty powder.
In the early noughties when the prospect of a hydrogen economy looked more likely, there was a fluffy of articles talking about risks to the ozone layer from leaked hydrogen. That question seems to have died off, but I haven’t found whether it was shown to be a non-issue, or whether it just reflects an assessed low probability of widespread hydrogen use.
I am aware of the likely costs of new reactor designs, for ships. As well as the PR issues.
I don’t think shipping companies will go there.
Probably a little bit pissed off.
Auckland City Council have Resource Consent to dump toxic sludge out of Auckland Viaduct Harbour into the pristine waters of Great Barrier Island so some rich wankers can have a silly little boat race in Auckland Harbour ?
Sssh city pollution good . Country pollution bad .
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2019/03/watch-jacinda-ardern-and-simon-bridges-in-fiery-debate-over-m-ori-capital-gains-tax-exemptions.html
Jacinda losing it in the house today.
Very funny. Bridges looks firmly in control.
I see nothing of the sort in the link provided. He said she said – no big deal. But if you need that illusion to help you get chubby by all means who am I to judge.
Rolling a turd in glitter only works if it’s still moist. The tax debate is as dry as a desert coprolite.
I just watched the full exchange and the PM clearly owned it.
The only thing I agree with is that yeah, it was funny.
Of course, you and the Herald shills are free to pretend to see it differently.
The acting leader of the nat party should be renamed ‘Slicks’, not for his hair, or love for big oil, but for the fact he get’s no traction when the red rain pours.
Your a funny chap there James, Jacinda neither lost it or Bridges looked in control, but you’re right it was a little funny. The Prime Minister ended still with a smile on her face and the Leader of the National Party looked like he was about to burst into tears. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
Did Slick get cwoss and cwy jimbo?
Jimmy you have finally arrived we have been waiting all day.
Some of us have things to do.
Glad you have been thinking of me all day – I haven’t given you a second thought.
LOL
I can’t think why National’s only asking questions about the Cullen report. They’ve decided that recommendations in it are exactly what’s going to happen, the Government’s going to do everything suggested.
Surely they have the imagination to work out what’s going to come out of other reviews and can put the heat on the Government about the decisions they’ve already made to instigate all recommendations. You know, make it all up – should be easy from the fantasyland they’re in.
An issue has finally emerged that they care about.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/111065215/kpiti-expressway-needs-25-million-worth-of-repairs-just-two-years-after-opening
tempted to just say “lol”
But if you dig deeper (not that I could give a fuck because of gNat and NZTA muppetry, AND if you consider the Levin Mayor’s contributions today to the debate) ….. it all couldn’t have happened to such ideologically driven peeps.
If you go back over the years from the dismantling of MOW, to out-saucing – even where bitumen is available (primarily from a private monopoly), Hark at Thee for trying to scream foul now.
Shudda Cudda Wudda.
I mean!!!!! this same shit happened before FFS on that same route.
Is there anyone among elected government representatives that has yet got past the flagellation phase of pandering to their ‘officials’ (who LEAST OF ALL have your best interests at heart)
As things pan out, I’m actually seriously worried about the Coalition and in particular some with Ministerial responsibilities.
For some, there some really FUCKING EASY gains to be made (e.g. with Immigration, OR with Land Transport, or various other things that could be done via Ministerial regulatory and ‘last chance’ options).
Doesn’t seem to be happening so far (and it’s what????? 12 -15 months)
Are some of them actually masochists do you think?
Why not email or write an actual letter just to show some of us know how* to the various Ministers you would like to test for masochism and see if you can penetrate their defence mechanisms.
(*Our city post office has just been abandoned for no reason except ideology. Here in Nelson it is very busy in the tourist season and we had a nice central location which is all being given over to Kiwi Bank. With a different design we could have given Kiwi bank pride of place and had a simpler post office set up but no it has to go to the back of a nearby private book and stationery shop. Bloody Post Office dimwits and vandals. They have made up their mind that it’s a dying business and are speeding it on its way – just too unimaginative to keep it going with a simpler business model that differs depending on the site and location.)
I’m on the move again @grey, so difficult to give you a full reply atm, but I have done so in the past as have others from various advocacy groups, unions, and so on – AND provided instances (cases) where people have been let down – either through under-resourcing, inexperience, or just sheer muppetry.
What is annoying is that in many many instances, the failings (MBIE, NZTA, Health, DHBs, WINZ, HNZ etc.) is all a matter of record.
And though I don’t necessarily agree with NZ1’s approach to some of our PS (the Senior ranks), I can understand their frustration.
Unless there is some sort of reform of the PS, it is going to be hard for this coalition to be “transformational”.
Immigrant worker exploitation (for example) could AT LEAST be minimised, along with its flow on effects in driving down wages quite easily. I’m wondering whether the only reason a couple of simple steps haven’t been taken is because there is fear that a flood of complaints might overwhelm the Labour Inspectorate – but which to do you more important? I’d suggest trying to minimise the exploitation and eventually holding the exploiters to account trumps anything based on past bad policy advice.
Kia ora The AM Show Its cool that today is international Wahines day for equality its is a cause that Eco Maori champions. They won’t let a truly powerful Artificial Intelligence program to give financial advice to the masses as the billionaire won’t be able to ripp us off.
Its more than just sports that is fixed in our society.
The Hokatika Wild foods festival would be great to go and see there are Alot of bush food that we could harvest that we don’t even know about it would be good for the environment and organic as well
Why is Fonterra selling its silver ware its stupid are some of the people in the know lining Tip top up to buy cheap and than resell making huge profits at the expense of farmers selling is also not logical when interest rates are at historical lows.???????????????????. With the Rugby The people who control the World don’t want a team called the All Blacks domanating World Rugby don’t let the bigots win.
Nice money Phil Goff has good control of Auckland he is doing a great job.
Our return armed forces personnel NZDF do need more care I see all Around the world that they are suffering mental fatigue physically disabled but I would never let my Mokopunas go to war no one wins in war. judy its all very well that you’re child can afford private education but most people can not hence our government invested in our future with the money given to our youths education.
Sir Michael Cullen has more Good knowledge on the tax system than the whole of the national party. There moto is giving more to the wealthy and take more from the poor. Anyperson with a logical brain can work out that is a unsustainable model when money is consentrated in a few hands. Te tangata te tangata te tangata when everyone ha enough KAI all te tangata are healthy and happy when only a few have all the KAI nobody is happy Ka kite ano
Don’t believe the sandflys lieing spinning about what’s going on in my life at the minute. You can not compare my situation with ANYONE else’s it Eco Maori. For one they will and have use everything at their disposal to try and LOCKME UP the power of the states spy’s and NOTHING if they had one shread of evedince they would have locked me up druged me up and carry on shitting on the common people. Ana to kai. Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
I read a bit about this plite happening to Our Native Amercian and Canada Wahine Cousins I could not believe what I had read I waited for some more information on the subject Its SHOCKING that these Wahine from Amercia and Canada are missing and 4 to 5 x as much as whites WTF in a first world country this should not be happening. The aurthoritys could find them or what happened to them but because tangata whenua/ people of the land cultures are being suppressed all around the world they DONT GIVE A SHIT.
REDress exhibit highlights epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women
Haunting outdoor art installation by Canadian artist Jaime Black is on display at Washington DC Museum
The REDress Project, an outdoor art installation by Métis artist Jaime Black at Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC. Photograph: Katherine Fogden/National Museum of the American Indian
T
hirty-five red dresses hung on winter-bare trees lining the Riverwalk along the National Museum of the American Indian. A woman pushing a stroller stopped to watch the garments twist in the wind, staring at the smallest dress in the collection – one that would fit a little girl.
The REDress Project is a haunting outdoor art installation in Washington DC by Canadian artist Jaime Black meant to symbolize the epidemic of violence against indigenous women and girls.
“Every visitor will have a different experience with the dresses,” said Machel Monenerkit, the deputy director of the National Museum of American Indian. “But you cannot walk through this installation and not have some emotional experience.”
For years and at astonishing rates, Native women in the United States, Canada and across the continent have gone missing or been murdered. Native American women are 10 times more likely to be murdered and four times more likely to be sexually assaulted than the national average, according to a recent report by the US Commission on Civil Rights.
But in the era of #MeToo and after the first two Native American women were elected to Congress in 2018, there is a renewed effort to account for the disappearances and prevent future tragedies. Ka kite ano links below .
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/07/redress-exhibit-dc-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women
Some Eco Maori Music for the Minute.
Kia ora Te ao Maori News I say that those youth justice prison are training grounds for our tamariki to learn bad habits off the harden tamariki that are in their it needs to have more than just a Maori name it needs to be run by Maori as we will teach them good principles and love them not loave them and treat them like a treasure not dirt.
Tipuni Kokori is only a shell compare to the Mana funding it once had and Eco Maori says it need more funding to help Maori tangata and businesses.
Sports is a good way for OUR tamariki to climb up to their maximum heights on their ladders of life. I was to busy trying to building my Maunga plus we live in the wopwops to concentrate on my tamariki sport te Wahine was sleeping. That’s good to know to karakia to the Stars
Ka pai Ken the break dancer Tau toko smoke free I hear that the Olympic committee is considering having break danceing in the Olympic. Ka kite ano
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
Te billionares oil barron climate change suppressors do obey any rules mans or GOD,s keep up the good mahi tamariki /good work children
Student climate change strike: Rules don’t matter when you’re fighting for your future
OPINION: I have a memory of my grandfather saying that, when he was young, children were to be seen and not heard. Reflecting on it now, I suspect that I was being naughty at the time and he was suggesting that I might consider being seen and not heard.
On March 15, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of young people are intending to walk out of their classrooms. They will take to the streets to protest decades of complacency and inaction on climate change, on the part of the adults whose first responsibility should have been the future these kids will inherit.
Since the “School Strike 4 Climate” was announced, a number of adults have expressed apparent concern for the impact that taking time out of school will have on the education of these young students.
But I don’t remember any concern for the impact on my schooling when I was marshalled out of class for a morning so I could wave to a fast-passing limousine bearing Prince Charles and Lady Diana on their visit to Wellington in 1983.
It wouldn’t have helped bring an end to apartheid if protesters had rented side-line advertising space during half time at the All Blacks v Springboks test matches in 1981.
And homosexual law reform wouldn’t have happened if gay rights activists had stayed in the closet and out of sight.
Should kids be skipping school to shout about inaction on climate change? I wish they didn’t feel they had to. I wish they weren’t left feeling like they have to fight for their futures.
That’s why I, as your Green Party minister in this Government, will make sure we bring the Zero Carbon Bill into law.
That law will establish an important certainty in Aotearoa New Zealand, that we can and must reduce the greenhouse gas pollution which is overheating our planet and threatening the delicate balance that maintains our existence.
There may once have been a time when it was considered right and proper that children should be seen and not heard. But when our children feel like they’re fighting for their future, this is not that time.
James Shaw is the co-leader of the Green Party and the Minister for Climate Change. Ka kite ano links below.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/111139469/student-climate-strikes-rules-dont-matter-when-youre-fighting-for-your-future
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
Eco Maori Say Kia Kaha Mana Wahine pay equity Equality will give ladys the power to fight for a good cause Wahines Mana if power is money and the men are given 10 to 100 x more money than Wahine if we do close the wage gap than we will never get EQUALITY for Wahine
United States women’s football team sues for equitable pay
Players for the US women’s national football team have filed a gender discrimination lawsuit seeking pay that is equitable to that of their male counterparts
The action comes just three months before the team will defend its title at the women’s World Cup in France.
The players allege that they have been subject to ongoing “institutionalised gender discrimination,” including unequal pay, despite having the same job responsibilities as players on the men’s national team. The 28 members of the current national team player pool joined in the class-action lawsuit against the US Soccer Federation, which was filed Friday in federal court in Los Angeles under the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The players are seeking equitable pay and treatment, in addition to damages including back pay.
`And hopefully in that way it inspires women everywhere.”
The US Women’s National Team Players Association was not party to the lawsuit, but in a statement said it “supports the plaintiffs’ goal of eliminating gender-based discrimination by USSF.”
The US Soccer Federation didn’t have an immediate comment.
The USSF has maintained in the past that much of the pay disparity between the men’s and women’s teams results from separate collective bargaining agreements.
The women’s team set up its compensation structure, which included a guaranteed salary rather than a pay-for-play model like the men, in the last labor contract. The players also earn salaries – paid by the federation – for playing in the National Women’s Soccer League.
The women receive other benefits, including health care, that the men’s national team players don’t receive, the federation has maintained.
This is not the first time the players have sought equitable compensation and conditions. Ka kite ano links below P.S There was nothing wrong with our best mens sports team so why has it been turned insideout
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/football/world-game/111154110/united-states-womens-football-team-sues-for-equitable-pay