To put it bluntly the Govt. should be plunking down many millions on these types of initiatives to house the people. But it seems the bulk of the Labour Caucus would fill their pants at the prospect of a mass flat pack/tiny house/apartment build.
Yes there is a reason for that timidity, many decades of housing being treated as a cash cow rather than a family resource and accomodation, does not allow for an easy quick solution, but it surely must be attempted.
(New) Labour New Zealand are as much a part of the problem as National, therefore as they both exist today they will never tackle this housing disaster..I can't understand why people haven't figured out by now that Ardern/Robertson and pretty much all Labour NZ are Neo Liberal Free Market ideologues…they are real believers in that shit and are prepared to hold that course until the bitter end, just like all ideologues (myself included, except my political ideology is right and theirs is wrong).
I agree Adrian, which is why I have suggested homeless and supporters need to start occupying appropriate empty residential and commercial property in an organised manner to put some more heat on the Labour Caucus. Pressure worked at Ihumatāo. Around 40,000 empty properties in Auckland per various statistics from Census to Real Estate sources.
Squatting was common when I was young in England. Unoccupied buildings were squatted and in London, there was an agreement between local councils and a well organised squatting movement that allowed people who couldnt afford the rents at the time to occupy empty council homes that were going to be renovated or knocked down. My partner and I lived in 2 of these places for several years with others until eventually securing a council flat. I think squatting has been a criminal offence for years, now. Thatcher and those who followed her squashed all those protests at the same time as they squashed the miners and the British TU movement. Then she sold off as many council houses as possible.
We have brought up 3 children in an 150 year old school house, the main living area of which is the dining, lounge, homework and play area and is 60 sq metres. A 60 sq metre house which also requires toilet and bathroom, kitchen, wash house and storage and 3 bedrooms crammed into the same meterage means the rooms become cells. That’s why these things get turned down they don’t meet the required regulatory conditions for healthy living. Yes, there will be stories of “We we’re all bought up in shoebox and luvved it”, and so was I, but it had an outside shithouse, the bathroom could only take one person at a time and a standard bed wouldn’t fit in my shared room. It was not fit for purpose.
If you count 8 sqm per bedroom as a min that would meant your three rooms would be 24 sqm, then the rest can be build into the remaining 36 sqm.
Yeah, that might be a bit small, but it beats living in transient housing at million dollars for some motels who would have gone bust since the closed borders were it not for homeless people and those that lost houses in floods/tornadoes etc.
Also not everyone has three kids. Tell us why someone starting out in adult life needs a 100sqm, three garages, two landings and 4 rooms?
I remember a journalist in tears as he described the likely starvation of people in an African country. They had estimates that they only had enough food, grain etc for about two weeks to send out to the people whose crops had failed, or had run from violence. The Red Cross were onto it, they were making plans for a big delivery – but that was months away, some said six months.
Sometimes the small is beautiful, get started with practical plans now is the right thing to do. Not worry about the medium-term future, not make doubtful comments about it not being the best answer; if it fits short-term, wear it.
Definitely a fair point to consider. The penalty for failure of subsized homes, however, is a slum. So would it be "two steps forward, one back", or "one step forward, two back"?
The fact is that detached housing, no matter the size, isn't going to change the housing crisis. Just money for developers.
Vacant investment dwellings and significant state housing increases need to be addressed. It's possible that some of the govt's economic changes might tweak things over the longer term, but I doubt it will decimate property market speculation.
Agree 96% – but some more advanced fix-it ideas needed.
Like registering at an approved camping ground with toilets and showers. and covered area around them. concrete pathways and electric points so that those who have to sleep in their cars can do so. This would be government admitting the need and helping one group in a practical, honest way instead of promises at the end of the very ordinary rainbow. People who didn't behave would be ejected, so that those using the facility would have good sleep and security,
"NZ is going to the dogs because we cannot express ourselves freely and frankly any longer" = New Zealand is going to the dogs because I fear my opinions and worldview are no longer hegemonic and I am being challenged in ways I find unacceptable. And I will 'prove' this by pointing at all manner of dopey sh*t that is basically just irrelevant peripheral idiocy – while ignoring anything else that doesn't suit my argument.
Well I think its fair to say outside of Covid response evidence is mounting that this Govt is failing badly on a core issue that they had promised to address.
We all know that accommodation insecurity / affordability has a severe effect on families and their children including long term outcomes I think you can see the beginnings of this here.
This is a crisis and it feels like the current govt is happy to tinker around the edges doing just enough to avoid real scrutiny… a middle class free the lane protest got a faster reaction ffs.
A Hawke's Bay hotel that earned $1.5 million in nine months from housing people in emergency accommodation has stopped because it was "too much hassle".
He said the $1.55m his hotel earned could be down to the November floods in Napier, which displaced hundreds and caused millions of dollars of damage.
oh well. I guess that money will help him weather the lack of tourists and if its not enough they can again take up unhoused kiwis for another million or several.
Yeah, I remember the endless media stories towards the end last Nat govt covering homelessness we had the big sleepout events all this pressure for action and now we have a Lab majority govt if feels no one cares that much anymore…
i honestly don't care about Louise Upton, i dont' think that women has ever said a word in her political life that had value.
My point was that the Motelier complained about housing people for Top Dollar who mostly have lost their houses in floods. He called it / them a 'hassle' that is not worth it.
Unless 1.55 million is not top dollar and being a shitheel is the new norm.
Yup, othering, virtue signalling, making unsupported assumptions about what others think or feel, criticising the good intentions and actions of others, judging others in a negative way, the list goes on, doesn’t it, Sabine?
sabine washes her hands of all her statements with the trump excuse"im only repeating what someone else has said" just as indefensable as saying she is carbon negative because she doesnt have a car, too bad that all her product is delivered and most of her product is resold to people using dinosaur juice. bollocks…
Sabine's comments might work on the 80:20 principle. Most right but it us hard to see the constant truth. Perhaps you should put up some more interesting German stuff Sabine that we could learn from. You would be making your point and giving us some fresh ideas to add to the pot.
The Lambda variant – known to scientists as C.37 – was first identified in Peru and has been detected in samples dating back to as early as December 2020.
Since then it has become the dominant variant in the South American country, where it accounts for more than 80 per cent of new infections.
It has now been detected in at least 26 countries, including the UK. So should we be concerned?
A Variant of Interest
The World Health Organisation designated the Lambda variant as a variant of interest on 14 June.
It's more infectious than delta and so far appears to resist the vaccines.
Blojo wants to remove many restrictions in a week or so whilst the reigning F1 Champion is openly critical of the expected crowd at his home event for the British GP
If Bojo's "Freedom Day" on July 19 results in a million-person march descending on no.10 demanding that the genocidal lunatic leave office, there is some justification for it. More likely though that everyone will go to the pub.
I know, right. How dare the rest of the western world actually have a vaccination plan and a plan to move beyond closed borders and MIQ as the only way to deal with COVID.
A plan based on the science that's data driven so you know it's effective is awesome.
However the tories have time and again shown a priority for the optics, dominating the rhetoric and looking after their mates with lucrative uncontested contracts using covid as cover.
Good new covert system David, kill Covid19 and its variants off! Use sly remarks, they are so satisfying to the progenitor. Bet you don't even know what that means.
There is distinction between the Variants of Concern (still only alpha, beta, gamma & delta), and Variants of Interest (epsilon-lambda). Kappa is also a potential VoC; and it may not be always distinguished from delta, if the reference sequences aren't being looked for. Though it does seem to be a bit weird that Lambda is more related to alpha (B1.1 – first detected in UK) than gamma (P.1 – Brazil). It's a bit hard to tell; given the limits of Brazilian SARS-CoV-2 testing, but the gamma may be holding it's own against the lambda variant there.
I found this particularly concerning from your link, Sabine:
A new study – which has not yet been reviewed by other scientists and is based on tests on samples from healthcare workers in Chile – suggests that the Lambda variant is more infectious than both the Alpha (UK) or the Gamma (Brazil) variants.
It also suggests that the Lambda variant has a higher "immune escape" compared to the Alpha or Gamma variants in relation to antibodies produced in patients who have received China’s CoronaVac (Sinovac) vaccine. (The preprint, published on 1 July, did not look at other vaccines).
Much like Covid-19, simple precautions like social distancing, hand washing and keeping sick children home from daycare or kindy could help to limit the spread [of the RSV virus], he said.
But what about our freedoms? If you take away my freedom to cough over other people's babies what will you do next – forced labour camps and organ-harvesting?
When will we stand up to Australia's abuse of our common entry border?
Are we appalled at Australia's contempt for New Zealand as a dumping ground for convicts who have done their time in Australia?
Currently new Zealand shares a common entry border with Australia.
Should New Zealand protest these deportations as a breach of the common border?
Should the government give a warning that the continued abuse of our common entry border threatens the preferential free entry to New Zealand afforded Australian citizens?
If this abuse continues, should New Zealand demote Australian citizens to the same entry restrictions that we impose on our Pacific Island neighbours?
In the midst of a pandemic.
Is it time for New Zealand to stop being supine to Australia over the forced detention and deportation of 501s to this country?
Should the government tell the Morrison Administration that flights from Australia bearing 501s will not be given landing rights, or not be allowed to disembark?
Or how about these '501's actually accepting their own responsibility for their plight?
Why do you care, or why do you think anyone else should care about these 'people'?
Australia is acting legally and with its own interests at heart. We spent decades exporting our problem people (long term unemployed, criminals and so on) to Australia, starting from the 1970s. Thats why Kiwis are and have been so prominent in Australian organised crime (eg, Mr Asia Syndicate). I guess what goes around comes around.
Australia has a good historical example for transportation of criminals. Between 1788 and 1868 more than 162,000 convicts were transported to Australia. It’s estimated that 20% of the Australian population, over 5 million people, are descended from people originally transported as convicts, while around 2 million Britons have transported convict ancestry.
Just thinking about the length of your comments Jenny JTGT. I know that the setting when enter is pressed is to go to double spacing. When I finish my comments I usually go back and edit it to help put my point over, and I don't have a lot of one line paragraphs as you do.
Could you consider making your comments shorter, more concise, easier to read. Then more people will read them and not just get annoyed at the number and length of yours. You are exhorting others all the time to do more, and giving us info about the environment, so to get the maximum number of minds reading them, the above changes would help your quest.
This then raises the question: Are prisoners entitled to medical care while in custody? Because i seem that is what he is mainly complaining about, the lack of medical care.
Unless we don't care about such things when it comes to those that we deem 'undesirables' such as the 501'ers.
;"are prisoners entitled to medical care while in custody?" good question and one that continues to vex private prison operators in the u.s. . a real profit killer, blacks in prison have significantley better healthcare and a longer life expectancy than there brothers who are free(?). this has lead directley to private prison operators petitioning various states to be allowed to release many lossleaders,sorry, prisoners early, .. three stikes be damned.
If this article is true, haven't the tax break on the EV's been a waste of time? Japanese putting up the price of EV's by the amount of the subsidy!
"In Japan, there's such a small number of EVs. In terms of pricing, the vehicles in Japan have all gone up for the amount of the subsidy – $3450."
– Todd Hunter, Turners Automotive Group
Provided the car has a 3 Star safety rating and qualifies for the subsidy, and is being built in RHD, that'd come out cheaper than a lot of e-bikes or second hand ice cars.
So, Barnaby Joyce is back leading the Australian National Party.
That means Deputy Prime Minister. Big Cabinet vote. Big policy influence.
National used to he a straight rural political organization. Now it's the funnel for big oil and coal to tilt Australian politics away from climate mitigation. Very successfully over a decade.
That's a massive headache for the Liberals, because those rich inner seats will keep getting lost to light green independents.
And of course that itself will become the second largest transTasman problem for NZ and our Pacific Island colleagues.
One small party spill, one very big political problem.
As pointed out before, our deplorables have found Australia the land of promise, where they have flourished in that fertile soil, Joyce, Bjelke-Petersen, Clark, etc. (But not Clarke.) I guess it's all our fault! Now we have to get stronger to combat that overseas well-fed team of bullies. Perhaps we should try to enhance our strong points, and strive together including all in our team, and send the remaining deplorables over there to join with their natural cohort.
(As is common in communications (lazy), only an acronym is used in this item, with no reference to the actual descriptive words. So here is info. – Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) Infection)
Our nation's leaders and wealthy upper class have brought the living conditions here down so far that people cannot keep themselves healthy, no longer having a standard of living previously regarded as basic and expected in an 'advanced, developed' country. Advancing means going forward, but we always thought it meant rising, not being on a sloping, downward path,
There is no resilience in much of the population to be able to cope with the unhealthy conditions that bring sickness to the lower strata of society. Yet I see an outwardly pleasant world as i look locally and read about NZ with many examples of well-off people and consumer goods and holidays that the comfortably-off can afford. It's time to get off your comfortable assets and look to doing your bit to assist those disadvantaged through not having your 'class' advantages.
It will cost you, but remember that we all pay tax through GST, and on top of that you can afford to pay more from your discretionary income ie what is left after paying the necessary bills, and buy less of your wants, so there is money left to go to others who can then have their needs met.
More stats about something we know is a precipitating factor? How will that help us? The UN have already told us we are not up to the mark in the modern world as far as kiddies are concerned.l
Wikpedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_poverty_in_New_Zealand#Housing In 2010 25,000 children, mostly from lower-income families, were admitted to hospital for preventable respiratory infections aggravated by poor houses…The highest levels of crowding seen from 2013-2015 were children ages 0–17 living in social housing. 33% of children living in social housing experienced overcrowding
New Zealand continues to fail children, Unicef report shows …
This article on suicide: 3/09/2020 — Last year, Unicef's State of the World's Children report ranked New Zealand second-worst in the OECD for child obesity. New Zealand also ranked 33rd of 38 for ..
A "feasibility study" was commissioned as part of the overhaul of Child, Youth and Family (CYF), which found that such an approach was "highly desirable" to support a consistent approach.
Perhaps someone can design a movable fence in Hurricane wire or such, and that can be placed around the seal to protect it and allow it uninterrupted spectator enjoyment! The kids can regard it as a mascot, give it a name, and ask it to arf who it considers the best player or team. Have to think laterally here I think.
What do you think would happen if the pay were increased to say 35 NZD? The landlords would increase their rent once a year as they are legally allowed to do.
27NZD *40=1080 NZD per week, plus Kiwi Safer, Holiday Pay, Sick leave.
But if you think that you can increase the pay to a point where Landlords are gonna be shamed into not annually increasing their rentals to match the pay increases, then how much would that be?
Fifty bucks? A hundred?
We need a better system for rentals and rents charged. A. the rent should reflect the value of the space rented. B. the rent should reflect that one uses the premises, but will not own these (difference between mortgage and rent), c. all rentals should be open ended, and rent should only be increased if significant investment happened during that tenancy. I .e. say remodel of the rotting bathroom could / should lead to a higher rent. These are just a few things that could be done, above all a Rent Cap system could be established.
However that is not being done, with expeption being Chloe Swarbruck who raises these issues.
Agree we have a massive problem with out of control housing costs and I completely support perpetual tenancy by right and rent controls (and capital taxes too!). These need addressing and as you mention – Labour and National seem resolved not to do anything significant.
But these high costs are real and the solution to the burden on society is not to suppress wages, but to address the housing crisis.
Something that doesn't get mentioned in the hospo worker shortage is that people don't want to work in hospo because of covid. They've found other employment where you don't have random strangers spraying all over you. Personally know a lot who don't do hospo any more.
Same goes on the punter side of the game too, people are being careful where and when they go out now.
Over a third of Kiwis claimed their lifestyle values have changed since the Covid-19 lockdowns. These have shifted to focus on family, health, friends and time.
Nearly half of Kiwis agree that they now go out for dinner less frequently than they did before Covid. While 43% are trying to save money due to uncertainty, 35% do so because they enjoy staying at home more after getting used to it in lockdowns.
Well, casting my mind back to 12 or so months ago, back then we would have been ecstatic at the idea of a vaccine with efficacy numbers as good as the reduced efficacy claimed for Pfizer against the Delta variant in Israel.
Never mind that the UK has studied the same question and found a much smaller reduction in efficacy than the Israelis.
The data, however, also shows that the [Pfizer] vaccine is still highly effective against preventing serious symptoms and hospitalization. During May, that figure stood at 98.2%, and during June, it was 93%.
Never mind the sentence construction, appreciate the good news. There will be [at least some] better days ahead – but we can't hurry them.
Some of us need a chuckle, and are interested in a different perspective on politics. The Holy Grail offers some hidden truths – it's not all buffoonery.
Perhaps this opens up a sport that would take up male energies and channel them into fighting which also requires skill in metalwork, and obedience to a code of how to knock other people about. The new ABs.
Treetop, can you just enjoy giving some positive news, without the grizzle 'not happening fast enough'. Be grateful completely, we need to feed that in when something good happens and just leave it as a Good Thing.
If it's magic you wouldn't see it, so how do you know they aren't using it somewhere? It's not near me though so maybe you're right. But i like fairy stories; they can feel free to float by me scattering stars and tinsel around some great achievement.
It goes to show it can be done. It is a slow process. It is not happening fast enough and this is a fact. If you interpret fact as grizzle that is up to you.
Just drove from Blenheim to Christchurch and must have seen hundreds of houses being built and in even the smallest settlements, but get here and only read about ‘ Labour housing failure’ , these blind media fuckers need to get out more.
But who are the houses being built for Adrian? Can they be afforded by the really needy, the young families, the poorly paid single people or ones in the 'gig' economy with short-term contracts? Are they just a way for the overseas and local investors to exchange their vouchers for something real, such a nice solid feeling of wealth. Are they being used as lures for the overseas people who have come from a country that offers better wages, ie Australia…as holiday homes, or retirement ones, rather than adding extra houses to the present local waiting list? Are the houses built and the incoming residents in sync so that the locals aren't seeing any more houses available for them?
Your irritated comment Adrian doesn't seem to allow for the above possibilities.
Now there's a good game for those who say the Government is doing nothing about housing and are also ultra-quick to to throw around words like "dictatorship" and "state control."
Let houses only be built for certain defined groups – no-one outside that group is to get builders working for them.
Our government wimps out on dealing with our current clusterfuck of a system for collecting funding for our roads, and just kicks the can of RUCs for electric vehicles down the road to 2024.
That means if your vehicle operating cost is any kind of factor in your purchasing choices, electric vehicles will cost more to operate from 2024 than a lot of the small hybrids running around today. I'm certainly not going to massively stretch my budget to go electric if there's that kind of financial penalty waiting to drop in 2 1/2 years.
Cmon Grey, bugger all people are allowed in so that shoots down that theory, houses aren’t usually built without pre-sale , “ poorly paid “ singles generally flat with others or camp with mum and dad so no they haven’t put down a deposit and gig workers move about a bit to much to settle down until they find a job they want to stay in. No, these houses are for people to live in. In Blenheim, a 240 unit retirement complex being built, which I didn’t count as I didn’t drive past it, will free up a couple of hundred houses for families to shift into either to rent or own. So that shoots down that theory as well.
The truth is that there are shitloads of houses being built, record numbers in fact, the last I heard the most annually since the early 70s. I’m complaining about lazy shit-stirring journalism. And shitloads of new houses puts downward pressure on housing costs and and about time, but speaking as an ex-builder I know it takes quite a while from the first line on a plan to a key in the door.
Ex-builder eh. So you know about it all. The problem is supply and demand for cheaper houses being in sync I guess. And whether those shitloads of houses are going to be leak-proof and fungus proof. Seems that one of the problems is the obsessive desire to have sealed-up houses so not a drop of hot air escapes. People need to open windows, stop thinking about lost energy units all the time, and government needs to just act sensibly and ensure builders are doing the right thing. Not only regulation but inspection while the concrete is being poured etc.
The local Mens Shelter up for many years, and very much prized as we can't afford to put another one or one for women in our NCC budget, may have to be vacated because it is too expensive to put in all the energy-saving insulation required by busy bureaucrats devoted to achieving 'best practice' and 100% compliance, even if they have to use a whip – /sarc for the sensitives.
All those houses, I hope they have young families and people living in them soon and they don't have to sell their souls to achieve that. But I am like bwaghorn wishful about magic wands, but with no suspended disbelief in the magician. And of course the disbelief needs to spread to the media because this is something they can hit Labour about. Why did they ever let wotsisname talk about 10,000 houses? Even a child of five would know that wouldn't fly. As Groucho Marx said – 'Send for a child of five' for our next list position.
Not that Housing Minister Megan Woods vouchsafes too many smiles these days – progressive or otherwise. These days Megan’s more into frowns. The earnest frowns of the political realist who knows that there is no simple or quick fix to New Zealand’s housing crisis. The stoical frown of the left-wing politician who yet remains unflinching in her determination to keep on doing what she can with what she’s got.
(It's part of a response to Bernard Hickey's comments on going to Oz and what is to be made of that by Minister Megan Wood.)
Crazy levels of apartments and townhouses going up in Auckland burbs now as well. Not just the 33m2 student apartments either.
Bit of a pain in the arse dealing with their traffic disruptions to build them. Along with the infrastructure upgrades to water, power and comms that go along with them.
edit
I would appreciate it if someone knows of a citizens website where there is a check kept on our business world. We were told things were going to be better under business control, and guidance instead of dozy old government…hah.
I am concerned about my friend's experiences with InterCity buses cancelling bus services at the drop of a hat, tourist information providers not notified of immediate effect etc. She had to hitchhike to get to her next stop so she could take up the flight bookings to get home. Another time she was in Christchurch for a weekend, came to get the bus back and nil result!
How much of this treatment of us as pawns to be pandered to when there is profit in it, and to be dropped like hot spuds when not, goes on? AirNZ has been doing this – people sleeping over at the airport or wherever when their plane is cancelled. If you are flying from Wellington to somewhere, and the flight is cancelled, you have to find your own accommodation as a local, it only gets provided for those from somewhere else!
I think we need a Citizens site that gets feedback where you can check to find the company that gives decent service. Or we can try to go back to a time where we could get some leverage from those supposed to be providing service.
For your information, in the year to the end of May, 43,460 new houses consented and the recent rolling monthly totals are heading for 50,000 annually. The most for almost 50 years.
Shows a March year on year nett increase of population about 33,200.
Better than the 117,900 from the previous March year.
Or the 79,200 the March year prior to that.
The ramp up on consents is welcome and way better than National has managed over 9 years of nett rampant population growth mostly from immigration, but there is a hell of a backlog.
From your figures, lprent, can one say that there are more houses being consented to be built than the total number of people in the net increase in New Zealand's population? That is, 43460 houses consented for 32,000 increase in population?
Can the figures be easily discovered for the same two figures over the last ten years? Is there a significant difference between the numbers consented, and the numbers actually built?
I'm watching a replay of today's question time where I watched the Prime Minister give a serve back to the Leader of the Opposition who was criticising children's having to be housed in motels by saying that this has to be better than children sleeping in cars. Especially when at the same time state housing was being sold into private ownership.
Just how many houses are we short in God's Own Country?
How does this sit in conscience with 200,000 empty houses in God's Own Country at the last census?
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David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy, Australian National University Every year on June 1, student debt in Australia is indexed to inflation. In 2023, high inflation pushed the indexation rate to 7.1%, the highest since 1990. This ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Changes in the May 14 budget will cut the student debt of more than three million people, wiping more than $3 billion from what people owe. The government will cap the HELP indexation rate ...
Asia Pacific Report The prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has appealed for an end to what it calls intimidation of its staff, saying such threats could constitute an offence against the “administration of justice” by the world’s permanent war crimes court. The Hague-based office of ICC Prosecutor ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk A women’s union in New Caledonia has staged a sit-in protest this week to support senior Kanak indigenous journalist Thérèse Waia, who works for public broadcaster Nouvelle-Calédonie la Première, after a smear attack by critics. The peaceful demonstration was held on ...
New Zealand Food Safety is monitoring overseas recalls of Indian packaged spice products manufactured by MDH and Everest due to concerns over a cancer-causing pesticide. ...
By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Fiji’s ranking in a global press freedom index has jumped into the top tier of countries with free or mostly free media after its government last year repealed a draconian law that threatened journalists with prison for doing their jobs. Fiji’s improvement ...
We might be in Invercargill but all anyone can talk about is Gore. Specifically, Salford Street. That’s where three-year-old Lachlan Jones lived, south of the centre of town, between the A&P Showgrounds and the Mataura River. Roughly 1.2 km away from the single level home he lived in with his ...
MONDAY I lined up the latest round of civil servants from city hall against the wall, and signalled for the firing squad to drop their rifles. I stepped up onto a wooden crate to look at the office workers in the eye. But that didn’t feel right, so I found ...
Keen hiker and second-year MSc student Liam Hewson wears two hats when he’s in the great outdoors. “The scientist in me appreciates nature and goes, ‘Oh, there’s that thing and there’s another thing,’ but then the tramper and the outdoorsy person in me thinks, ‘Cool bush.’” Born and bred in ...
After a long and illustrious career as a goal kicker, Dan Carter’s favourite way to unwind is… kicking goals. Why can’t he get enough of it? And what it’s like to watch him do it for an hour straight? A semicircle of people wielding cameras and phones has formed in ...
Dame Susan Devoy takes us through her life in television, including late night ER debriefs, her proudest CTI moment and the show she watches in secret. Quite aside from her four world champion squash titles, Dame Susan Devoy will likely go down in history as one of the best Celebrity ...
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Read/listen to these and weep…particularly the modular company account–they need more workflow fer crissakes…as motels blowout
https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-detail/story/2018800028/a-modular-solution-to-the-housing-crisis
https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-detail/story/2018799639/small-homes-big-ambitions
To put it bluntly the Govt. should be plunking down many millions on these types of initiatives to house the people. But it seems the bulk of the Labour Caucus would fill their pants at the prospect of a mass flat pack/tiny house/apartment build.
Yes there is a reason for that timidity, many decades of housing being treated as a cash cow rather than a family resource and accomodation, does not allow for an easy quick solution, but it surely must be attempted.
(New) Labour New Zealand are as much a part of the problem as National, therefore as they both exist today they will never tackle this housing disaster..I can't understand why people haven't figured out by now that Ardern/Robertson and pretty much all Labour NZ are Neo Liberal Free Market ideologues…they are real believers in that shit and are prepared to hold that course until the bitter end, just like all ideologues (myself included, except my political ideology is right and theirs is wrong).
Adrian Thornton I am enjoying reading your comments. Wry sometimes, and leading to useful thought most of the time. Please stick in there.
I agree Adrian, which is why I have suggested homeless and supporters need to start occupying appropriate empty residential and commercial property in an organised manner to put some more heat on the Labour Caucus. Pressure worked at Ihumatāo. Around 40,000 empty properties in Auckland per various statistics from Census to Real Estate sources.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/cat-maclennan-on-ghost-housing
Can you point yo a country that's following your ideology so I can check that you are in fact right. ??
Late 70s Cambodia seems pretty close, as far as I can tell.
Here is some info on England and Wales.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squatting_in_England_and_Wales
Interestingly, you can apply to own the property after 12 years.
Squatting was common when I was young in England. Unoccupied buildings were squatted and in London, there was an agreement between local councils and a well organised squatting movement that allowed people who couldnt afford the rents at the time to occupy empty council homes that were going to be renovated or knocked down. My partner and I lived in 2 of these places for several years with others until eventually securing a council flat. I think squatting has been a criminal offence for years, now. Thatcher and those who followed her squashed all those protests at the same time as they squashed the miners and the British TU movement. Then she sold off as many council houses as possible.
We have brought up 3 children in an 150 year old school house, the main living area of which is the dining, lounge, homework and play area and is 60 sq metres. A 60 sq metre house which also requires toilet and bathroom, kitchen, wash house and storage and 3 bedrooms crammed into the same meterage means the rooms become cells. That’s why these things get turned down they don’t meet the required regulatory conditions for healthy living. Yes, there will be stories of “We we’re all bought up in shoebox and luvved it”, and so was I, but it had an outside shithouse, the bathroom could only take one person at a time and a standard bed wouldn’t fit in my shared room. It was not fit for purpose.
How did you survive without a media room and ensuite?
If you count 8 sqm per bedroom as a min that would meant your three rooms would be 24 sqm, then the rest can be build into the remaining 36 sqm.
Yeah, that might be a bit small, but it beats living in transient housing at million dollars for some motels who would have gone bust since the closed borders were it not for homeless people and those that lost houses in floods/tornadoes etc.
Also not everyone has three kids. Tell us why someone starting out in adult life needs a 100sqm, three garages, two landings and 4 rooms?
That's the same argument as the one for jobs paying a sub-living minimum wage – it's only for hardy young 'uns starting out.
The problem is that a serious chunk of people end up in those jobs or dwellings for life.
I remember a journalist in tears as he described the likely starvation of people in an African country. They had estimates that they only had enough food, grain etc for about two weeks to send out to the people whose crops had failed, or had run from violence. The Red Cross were onto it, they were making plans for a big delivery – but that was months away, some said six months.
Sometimes the small is beautiful, get started with practical plans now is the right thing to do. Not worry about the medium-term future, not make doubtful comments about it not being the best answer; if it fits short-term, wear it.
Definitely a fair point to consider. The penalty for failure of subsized homes, however, is a slum. So would it be "two steps forward, one back", or "one step forward, two back"?
The fact is that detached housing, no matter the size, isn't going to change the housing crisis. Just money for developers.
Vacant investment dwellings and significant state housing increases need to be addressed. It's possible that some of the govt's economic changes might tweak things over the longer term, but I doubt it will decimate property market speculation.
Agree 96% – but some more advanced fix-it ideas needed.
Like registering at an approved camping ground with toilets and showers. and covered area around them. concrete pathways and electric points so that those who have to sleep in their cars can do so. This would be government admitting the need and helping one group in a practical, honest way instead of promises at the end of the very ordinary rainbow. People who didn't behave would be ejected, so that those using the facility would have good sleep and security,
Is that really better than transitional housing in a motel?
Helpfully, Tim Watkin and RNZ are drawing the dividing line for us.
https://www.pundit.co.nz/content/drawing-a-red-line-with-china
Better make sure that I choose the right side …
Yeah, apparently Japan is an imperialist country.
Shows what I (or maybe Tim) know to be facts.
NZ is going to the dogs because we cannot express ourselves freely and frankly any longer 🙁
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/worker-at-auckland-airport-arrested-after-making-concerning-comments/DXVJBX2253DLWGC3GVXHK2SR5Q/
Witness the supporters jumping to his aid \SARC
Hopefully more details will come out. Was he talking about a bomb? Or was he being racist or sexist?
Did he make them online or did he have a ‘bad day’ at work and yelled at his co-workers and/or his boss? But that’s not really my point 😉
Would you mind saying what your point is? I’m not getting it.
"NZ is going to the dogs because we cannot express ourselves freely and frankly any longer" = New Zealand is going to the dogs because I fear my opinions and worldview are no longer hegemonic and I am being challenged in ways I find unacceptable. And I will 'prove' this by pointing at all manner of dopey sh*t that is basically just irrelevant peripheral idiocy – while ignoring anything else that doesn't suit my argument.
Good one AB you understand the situation completely and ridicule it well, except that you are choosing the wrong side for your wry ire.
Well I think its fair to say outside of Covid response evidence is mounting that this Govt is failing badly on a core issue that they had promised to address.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018802675/nz-children-living-in-motels-reaches-record-high
The state house build is forecast to add around 8000 homes over the next 4 years which will barely touch the sides.
Record house price increases adding hundreds of thousands to values further entrenching inequality.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/real-estate/124504352/national-median-house-price-soars-to-record-high–reinz
Rents are hitting record highs https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/money/2021/04/housing-crisis-price-for-rentals-hits-new-all-time-high.html
We all know that accommodation insecurity / affordability has a severe effect on families and their children including long term outcomes I think you can see the beginnings of this here.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/truancy-crisis-more-than-60000-students-chronically-absent-from-school/6TXZWOLAE6WTO35J7CGKHIOOQ4/
This is a crisis and it feels like the current govt is happy to tinker around the edges doing just enough to avoid real scrutiny… a middle class free the lane protest got a faster reaction ffs.
well, there is a lot of money to be made in 'transient housing'.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/emergency-housing-crisis-hawkes-bay-hotel-earned-15m-in-nine-months-but-it-was-too-much-hassle/W3FGXTV5KFKFFJSXJXEB7RBV3E/
oh well. I guess that money will help him weather the lack of tourists and if its not enough they can again take up unhoused kiwis for another million or several.
As for the kids. No one really cares.
Yeah, I remember the endless media stories towards the end last Nat govt covering homelessness we had the big sleepout events all this pressure for action and now we have a Lab majority govt if feels no one cares that much anymore…
I retread the article.
Louise Upston obviously didn't want the hotel to take any of the displaced hundreds from the November floods in Napier.
Maybe she could have put them up at her place.
i honestly don't care about Louise Upton, i dont' think that women has ever said a word in her political life that had value.
My point was that the Motelier complained about housing people for Top Dollar who mostly have lost their houses in floods. He called it / them a 'hassle' that is not worth it.
Unless 1.55 million is not top dollar and being a shitheel is the new norm.
It saddens me to hear that you don’t care about the kids
We all got to do what we got to do, don't we Incognito.
Yup, othering, virtue signalling, making unsupported assumptions about what others think or feel, criticising the good intentions and actions of others, judging others in a negative way, the list goes on, doesn’t it, Sabine?
Of course Incognito, it must be as you say it is.
I don’t write your comments, so please don’t avoid taking responsibility for them; they are yours.
sabine washes her hands of all her statements with the trump excuse"im only repeating what someone else has said" just as indefensable as saying she is carbon negative because she doesnt have a car, too bad that all her product is delivered and most of her product is resold to people using dinosaur juice. bollocks…
Sabine's comments might work on the 80:20 principle. Most right but it us hard to see the constant truth. Perhaps you should put up some more interesting German stuff Sabine that we could learn from. You would be making your point and giving us some fresh ideas to add to the pot.
Move over Delta, there is a new kid in town. Everyone meet Lamda.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/covid-uk-lambda-variant-peru-b1878416.html
They are going to run out of letters soon to name these variants.
That is what i said to some friends today. Next roman numericals?
It's more infectious than delta and so far appears to resist the vaccines.
Blojo wants to remove many restrictions in a week or so whilst the reigning F1 Champion is openly critical of the expected crowd at his home event for the British GP
The new normal is here.
If Bojo's "Freedom Day" on July 19 results in a million-person march descending on no.10 demanding that the genocidal lunatic leave office, there is some justification for it. More likely though that everyone will go to the pub.
I know, right. How dare the rest of the western world actually have a vaccination plan and a plan to move beyond closed borders and MIQ as the only way to deal with COVID.
A plan based on the science that's data driven so you know it's effective is awesome.
However the tories have time and again shown a priority for the optics, dominating the rhetoric and looking after their mates with lucrative uncontested contracts using covid as cover.
Good new covert system David, kill Covid19 and its variants off! Use sly remarks, they are so satisfying to the progenitor. Bet you don't even know what that means.
There is distinction between the Variants of Concern (still only alpha, beta, gamma & delta), and Variants of Interest (epsilon-lambda). Kappa is also a potential VoC; and it may not be always distinguished from delta, if the reference sequences aren't being looked for. Though it does seem to be a bit weird that Lambda is more related to alpha (B1.1 – first detected in UK) than gamma (P.1 – Brazil). It's a bit hard to tell; given the limits of Brazilian SARS-CoV-2 testing, but the gamma may be holding it's own against the lambda variant there.
https://www.who.int/en/activities/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-variants/
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210627/Lambda-lineage-of-SARS-CoV-2-has-potential-to-become-variant-of-concern.aspx
I found this particularly concerning from your link, Sabine:
Honestly at this stage I just call it the fucking virus or the fucking plague. 🙂 TFV or TVP take your pick.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/446272/rsv-outbreak-cases-of-babies-with-serious-virus-rising-nationwide
But what about our freedoms? If you take away my freedom to cough over other people's babies what will you do next – forced labour camps and organ-harvesting?
AB – hyperbole?
When will we stand up to Australia's abuse of our common entry border?
Are we appalled at Australia's contempt for New Zealand as a dumping ground for convicts who have done their time in Australia?
Currently new Zealand shares a common entry border with Australia.
Should New Zealand protest these deportations as a breach of the common border?
Should the government give a warning that the continued abuse of our common entry border threatens the preferential free entry to New Zealand afforded Australian citizens?
If this abuse continues, should New Zealand demote Australian citizens to the same entry restrictions that we impose on our Pacific Island neighbours?
In the midst of a pandemic.
Is it time for New Zealand to stop being supine to Australia over the forced detention and deportation of 501s to this country?
Should the government tell the Morrison Administration that flights from Australia bearing 501s will not be given landing rights, or not be allowed to disembark?
Are we disgusted enough yet?
[over long text deleted]
https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national/deportee-with-terminal-cancer-says-australian-government-treats-501s-like-numbers-not-humans/ar-AALMzsU?
Or how about these '501's actually accepting their own responsibility for their plight?
Why do you care, or why do you think anyone else should care about these 'people'?
Australia is acting legally and with its own interests at heart. We spent decades exporting our problem people (long term unemployed, criminals and so on) to Australia, starting from the 1970s. Thats why Kiwis are and have been so prominent in Australian organised crime (eg, Mr Asia Syndicate). I guess what goes around comes around.
Australia has a good historical example for transportation of criminals. Between 1788 and 1868 more than 162,000 convicts were transported to Australia. It’s estimated that 20% of the Australian population, over 5 million people, are descended from people originally transported as convicts, while around 2 million Britons have transported convict ancestry.
https://www.migrationmuseum.org/were-your-ancestors-transported-to-australia-as-convicts/
Just thinking about the length of your comments Jenny JTGT. I know that the setting when enter is pressed is to go to double spacing. When I finish my comments I usually go back and edit it to help put my point over, and I don't have a lot of one line paragraphs as you do.
Could you consider making your comments shorter, more concise, easier to read. Then more people will read them and not just get annoyed at the number and length of yours. You are exhorting others all the time to do more, and giving us info about the environment, so to get the maximum number of minds reading them, the above changes would help your quest.
@ mac1 (8.1.1) … Australian Royalty
This then raises the question: Are prisoners entitled to medical care while in custody? Because i seem that is what he is mainly complaining about, the lack of medical care.
Unless we don't care about such things when it comes to those that we deem 'undesirables' such as the 501'ers.
;"are prisoners entitled to medical care while in custody?" good question and one that continues to vex private prison operators in the u.s. . a real profit killer, blacks in prison have significantley better healthcare and a longer life expectancy than there brothers who are free(?). this has lead directley to private prison operators petitioning various states to be allowed to release many lossleaders,sorry, prisoners early, .. three stikes be damned.
The real human rights being abused are us NZ citizens who have to put up with new massive criminal gangs expanding here.
They should be required to wear bracelets upon entry, until they renounce all such affiliates.
If this article is true, haven't the tax break on the EV's been a waste of time? Japanese putting up the price of EV's by the amount of the subsidy!
"In Japan, there's such a small number of EVs. In terms of pricing, the vehicles in Japan have all gone up for the amount of the subsidy – $3450."
– Todd Hunter, Turners Automotive Group
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/car-dealers-price-warning-on-ev-subsidies
Maybe we'll get Chinese EV like this one. Similar range to my Leaf yet with a much smaller 13 kw/h battery.
https://www.greencarcongress.com/2020/07/20200725-wuling.html
The Wuling Hong Guang Mini EV, outselling the Tesla. Under 3 metres long, under 700 kg weight, cleverly roomy inside. And much cheaper.
Provided the car has a 3 Star safety rating and qualifies for the subsidy, and is being built in RHD, that'd come out cheaper than a lot of e-bikes or second hand ice cars.
So, Barnaby Joyce is back leading the Australian National Party.
That means Deputy Prime Minister. Big Cabinet vote. Big policy influence.
National used to he a straight rural political organization. Now it's the funnel for big oil and coal to tilt Australian politics away from climate mitigation. Very successfully over a decade.
That's a massive headache for the Liberals, because those rich inner seats will keep getting lost to light green independents.
And of course that itself will become the second largest transTasman problem for NZ and our Pacific Island colleagues.
One small party spill, one very big political problem.
As pointed out before, our deplorables have found Australia the land of promise, where they have flourished in that fertile soil, Joyce, Bjelke-Petersen, Clark, etc. (But not Clarke.) I guess it's all our fault! Now we have to get stronger to combat that overseas well-fed team of bullies. Perhaps we should try to enhance our strong points, and strive together including all in our team, and send the remaining deplorables over there to join with their natural cohort.
wasnt hosking threatening-promising to phuck off to aus? start a whocares page.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/446272/rsv-outbreak-cases-of-babies-with-serious-virus-rising-nationwide
(As is common in communications (lazy), only an acronym is used in this item, with no reference to the actual descriptive words. So here is info. – Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) Infection)
Our nation's leaders and wealthy upper class have brought the living conditions here down so far that people cannot keep themselves healthy, no longer having a standard of living previously regarded as basic and expected in an 'advanced, developed' country. Advancing means going forward, but we always thought it meant rising, not being on a sloping, downward path,
There is no resilience in much of the population to be able to cope with the unhealthy conditions that bring sickness to the lower strata of society. Yet I see an outwardly pleasant world as i look locally and read about NZ with many examples of well-off people and consumer goods and holidays that the comfortably-off can afford. It's time to get off your comfortable assets and look to doing your bit to assist those disadvantaged through not having your 'class' advantages.
It will cost you, but remember that we all pay tax through GST, and on top of that you can afford to pay more from your discretionary income ie what is left after paying the necessary bills, and buy less of your wants, so there is money left to go to others who can then have their needs met.
I would like to know how many hospitalised babies live in substandard housing?
More stats about something we know is a precipitating factor? How will that help us? The UN have already told us we are not up to the mark in the modern world as far as kiddies are concerned.l
Wikpedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_poverty_in_New_Zealand#Housing
In 2010 25,000 children, mostly from lower-income families, were admitted to hospital for preventable respiratory infections aggravated by poor houses…The highest levels of crowding seen from 2013-2015 were children ages 0–17 living in social housing. 33% of children living in social housing experienced overcrowding
https://www.waikato.ac.nz/news-opinion/media/2020/new-zealand-is-violating-the-rights-of-its-children-is-it-time-to-change-the-legal-definition-of-age-discrimination
New Zealand continues to fail children, Unicef report shows …
This article on suicide: 3/09/2020 — Last year, Unicef's State of the World's Children report ranked New Zealand second-worst in the OECD for child obesity. New Zealand also ranked 33rd of 38 for ..
2016 https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/84170880/nz-comes-under-un-scrutiny-over-its-treatment-of-children
(Anne Tolley) It's asked New Zealand to report on whether the "outsourcing" of essential services to private enterprise is "compliant with the provisions of the convention".
A "feasibility study" was commissioned as part of the overhaul of Child, Youth and Family (CYF), which found that such an approach was "highly desirable" to support a consistent approach.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/446252/sea-lion-pitch-invasion-causes-suspension-of-two-kids-footie-games
Perhaps someone can design a movable fence in Hurricane wire or such, and that can be placed around the seal to protect it and allow it uninterrupted spectator enjoyment! The kids can regard it as a mascot, give it a name, and ask it to arf who it considers the best player or team. Have to think laterally here I think.
oh well that is some record i guess
https://twitter.com/UNFCCC/status/1412006088090820610
Yet another long article on the "Worker Shortage" (substitute "Pay and Training Shortage" every time you read that).
They say they offer $27 / hour so "it can't be the pay" – tried renting a house lately??!
Instead of paying or training – just braying to be allowed to bring in insecure immigrant labour to drive wages and training down.
What do you think would happen if the pay were increased to say 35 NZD? The landlords would increase their rent once a year as they are legally allowed to do.
27NZD *40=1080 NZD per week, plus Kiwi Safer, Holiday Pay, Sick leave.
But if you think that you can increase the pay to a point where Landlords are gonna be shamed into not annually increasing their rentals to match the pay increases, then how much would that be?
Fifty bucks? A hundred?
We need a better system for rentals and rents charged. A. the rent should reflect the value of the space rented. B. the rent should reflect that one uses the premises, but will not own these (difference between mortgage and rent), c. all rentals should be open ended, and rent should only be increased if significant investment happened during that tenancy. I .e. say remodel of the rotting bathroom could / should lead to a higher rent. These are just a few things that could be done, above all a Rent Cap system could be established.
However that is not being done, with expeption being Chloe Swarbruck who raises these issues.
Agree we have a massive problem with out of control housing costs and I completely support perpetual tenancy by right and rent controls (and capital taxes too!). These need addressing and as you mention – Labour and National seem resolved not to do anything significant.
But these high costs are real and the solution to the burden on society is not to suppress wages, but to address the housing crisis.
Something that doesn't get mentioned in the hospo worker shortage is that people don't want to work in hospo because of covid. They've found other employment where you don't have random strangers spraying all over you. Personally know a lot who don't do hospo any more.
Same goes on the punter side of the game too, people are being careful where and when they go out now.
Re above
https://theregister.co.nz/2021/07/05/new-zealands-hospitality-industry-is-struggling-more-than-ever/
I know 2 youngins who have worked in hospo and hated it because alot of people are rude ignorant fuckwits who cant even use basic manners.
Yep, and begrudge paying the price that would help enable a decent wage let alone a living.
Pfizer vaccine less effective against Delta variant, Israeli study finds
https://www.ft.com/content/0b3da41e-6390-4f4b-866c-da5c6aec7f5e
Well, that’s not the news that one would like to hear about this shitty virus.
Well, casting my mind back to 12 or so months ago, back then we would have been ecstatic at the idea of a vaccine with efficacy numbers as good as the reduced efficacy claimed for Pfizer against the Delta variant in Israel.
Never mind that the UK has studied the same question and found a much smaller reduction in efficacy than the Israelis.
"Always look on the bright side of life" – “At least they didn’t burn the potatoes.”
Or (simply) "The sun will come out…"
Never mind the sentence construction, appreciate the good news. There will be [at least some] better days ahead – but we can't hurry them.
Some of us need a chuckle, and are interested in a different perspective on politics. The Holy Grail offers some hidden truths – it's not all buffoonery.
Perhaps this opens up a sport that would take up male energies and channel them into fighting which also requires skill in metalwork, and obedience to a code of how to knock other people about. The new ABs.
England v Australia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoFM2s0jxyQ
NZrs are already into this. Let's get behind the code and the sporting bodies already organising it, make them officially recognised.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TflUa6IWNdk
(https://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/106094232/fighting-for-fun-an-inside-look-at-new-zealands-medieval-combat-scene
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Medieval_Combat_Federation
Good to see, but not happening fast enough. 83 apartments, 70 are one bedroom apartments.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/125552616/wellington-city-mission-opens-new-transitional-housing-facility-te-p-pori
Treetop, can you just enjoy giving some positive news, without the grizzle 'not happening fast enough'. Be grateful completely, we need to feed that in when something good happens and just leave it as a Good Thing.
Oh common grey every one knows labour has a fucking big magic wand, but the buggers simple wont use it.
If it's magic you wouldn't see it, so how do you know they aren't using it somewhere? It's not near me though so maybe you're right. But i like fairy stories; they can feel free to float by me scattering stars and tinsel around some great achievement.
It goes to show it can be done. It is a slow process. It is not happening fast enough and this is a fact. If you interpret fact as grizzle that is up to you.
Just drove from Blenheim to Christchurch and must have seen hundreds of houses being built and in even the smallest settlements, but get here and only read about ‘ Labour housing failure’ , these blind media fuckers need to get out more.
But who are the houses being built for Adrian? Can they be afforded by the really needy, the young families, the poorly paid single people or ones in the 'gig' economy with short-term contracts? Are they just a way for the overseas and local investors to exchange their vouchers for something real, such a nice solid feeling of wealth. Are they being used as lures for the overseas people who have come from a country that offers better wages, ie Australia…as holiday homes, or retirement ones, rather than adding extra houses to the present local waiting list? Are the houses built and the incoming residents in sync so that the locals aren't seeing any more houses available for them?
Your irritated comment Adrian doesn't seem to allow for the above possibilities.
Now there's a good game for those who say the Government is doing nothing about housing and are also ultra-quick to to throw around words like "dictatorship" and "state control."
Let houses only be built for certain defined groups – no-one outside that group is to get builders working for them.
Our government wimps out on dealing with our current clusterfuck of a system for collecting funding for our roads, and just kicks the can of RUCs for electric vehicles down the road to 2024.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/evs/125666247/government-extends-ruc-exemption-for-evs
That means if your vehicle operating cost is any kind of factor in your purchasing choices, electric vehicles will cost more to operate from 2024 than a lot of the small hybrids running around today. I'm certainly not going to massively stretch my budget to go electric if there's that kind of financial penalty waiting to drop in 2 1/2 years.
Cmon Grey, bugger all people are allowed in so that shoots down that theory, houses aren’t usually built without pre-sale , “ poorly paid “ singles generally flat with others or camp with mum and dad so no they haven’t put down a deposit and gig workers move about a bit to much to settle down until they find a job they want to stay in. No, these houses are for people to live in. In Blenheim, a 240 unit retirement complex being built, which I didn’t count as I didn’t drive past it, will free up a couple of hundred houses for families to shift into either to rent or own. So that shoots down that theory as well.
The truth is that there are shitloads of houses being built, record numbers in fact, the last I heard the most annually since the early 70s. I’m complaining about lazy shit-stirring journalism. And shitloads of new houses puts downward pressure on housing costs and and about time, but speaking as an ex-builder I know it takes quite a while from the first line on a plan to a key in the door.
Ex-builder eh. So you know about it all. The problem is supply and demand for cheaper houses being in sync I guess. And whether those shitloads of houses are going to be leak-proof and fungus proof. Seems that one of the problems is the obsessive desire to have sealed-up houses so not a drop of hot air escapes. People need to open windows, stop thinking about lost energy units all the time, and government needs to just act sensibly and ensure builders are doing the right thing. Not only regulation but inspection while the concrete is being poured etc.
The local Mens Shelter up for many years, and very much prized as we can't afford to put another one or one for women in our NCC budget, may have to be vacated because it is too expensive to put in all the energy-saving insulation required by busy bureaucrats devoted to achieving 'best practice' and 100% compliance, even if they have to use a whip – /sarc for the sensitives.
All those houses, I hope they have young families and people living in them soon and they don't have to sell their souls to achieve that. But I am like bwaghorn wishful about magic wands, but with no suspended disbelief in the magician. And of course the disbelief needs to spread to the media because this is something they can hit Labour about. Why did they ever let wotsisname talk about 10,000 houses? Even a child of five would know that wouldn't fly. As Groucho Marx said – 'Send for a child of five' for our next list position.
This from Bowalley Road on housing: https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-choice-giving-up-or-keeping-hope.html
Not that Housing Minister Megan Woods vouchsafes too many smiles these days – progressive or otherwise. These days Megan’s more into frowns. The earnest frowns of the political realist who knows that there is no simple or quick fix to New Zealand’s housing crisis. The stoical frown of the left-wing politician who yet remains unflinching in her determination to keep on doing what she can with what she’s got.
(It's part of a response to Bernard Hickey's comments on going to Oz and what is to be made of that by Minister Megan Wood.)
Crazy levels of apartments and townhouses going up in Auckland burbs now as well. Not just the 33m2 student apartments either.
Bit of a pain in the arse dealing with their traffic disruptions to build them. Along with the infrastructure upgrades to water, power and comms that go along with them.
edit
I would appreciate it if someone knows of a citizens website where there is a check kept on our business world. We were told things were going to be better under business control, and guidance instead of dozy old government…hah.
I am concerned about my friend's experiences with InterCity buses cancelling bus services at the drop of a hat, tourist information providers not notified of immediate effect etc. She had to hitchhike to get to her next stop so she could take up the flight bookings to get home. Another time she was in Christchurch for a weekend, came to get the bus back and nil result!
How much of this treatment of us as pawns to be pandered to when there is profit in it, and to be dropped like hot spuds when not, goes on? AirNZ has been doing this – people sleeping over at the airport or wherever when their plane is cancelled. If you are flying from Wellington to somewhere, and the flight is cancelled, you have to find your own accommodation as a local, it only gets provided for those from somewhere else!
I think we need a Citizens site that gets feedback where you can check to find the company that gives decent service. Or we can try to go back to a time where we could get some leverage from those supposed to be providing service.
For your information, in the year to the end of May, 43,460 new houses consented and the recent rolling monthly totals are heading for 50,000 annually. The most for almost 50 years.
Yay! But that still means that we’re running from way behind.
Stats estimates on population growth between March 2020 5,083,100 to March 2021 5,116,300
Shows a March year on year nett increase of population about 33,200.
Better than the 117,900 from the previous March year.
Or the 79,200 the March year prior to that.
The ramp up on consents is welcome and way better than National has managed over 9 years of nett rampant population growth mostly from immigration, but there is a hell of a backlog.
From your figures, lprent, can one say that there are more houses being consented to be built than the total number of people in the net increase in New Zealand's population? That is, 43460 houses consented for 32,000 increase in population?
Can the figures be easily discovered for the same two figures over the last ten years? Is there a significant difference between the numbers consented, and the numbers actually built?
I'm watching a replay of today's question time where I watched the Prime Minister give a serve back to the Leader of the Opposition who was criticising children's having to be housed in motels by saying that this has to be better than children sleeping in cars. Especially when at the same time state housing was being sold into private ownership.
Just how many houses are we short in God's Own Country?
How does this sit in conscience with 200,000 empty houses in God's Own Country at the last census?