“British lawmakers on have voted overwhelmingly in favour of a bill to legalize same-sex marriage championed by Prime Minister David Cameron,………..lawmakers voted 400 to 175” http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10863748
Wonder if this will happen so conclusively here or are we more conservative than UK?
Oh fuck. Is that really an email from David Shearer ‘personally’ – ie, they’ve gone to the bother of inserting christian names in the subject linen – wishing me a ‘Happy Waitangi Day’?
A sure footed Key sensing the nation’s mood over Waitangi, wipes the floor with Shearer.
Mr Key said previous Governments and others had tried to create a sense of “national participation” on the day.
“It would be good to see, but I’m not sure that we can or should try to force it. We are not by nature a nation of flag-wavers.”
Labour leader David Shearer has used the past two Waitangi Days to call for the day to be celebrated in a more positive way, using Australia Day as an example.
However, Mr Key said there was no other day on which the weight of history was felt quite so heavily.
“It is marked across an emotional spectrum that ranges from great passion among some of those gathered here, to indifference from those Kiwis whose sole interest in the day is encompassed by the weather forecast.”
No. But I imagine that on David Shearer’s woeful performance to date, a lot of people might. And a lot who would vote Labour will stay at home on the day.
Leadership is important, and Labour’s best leader is on the back bench replaced by some sort of politically inexperienced back room international conservative bureaucrat, who has been parachuted in, despite being completely lacking in charisma and with no obvious aptitude for the job.
Yes they will be voting Slippery for what he might,depending of course upon the NZ Supreme Court, put into their back pockets, Labour having failed to move them with a prior bid on providing cheap home ownership,
Oh well to sidestep such defeatism as you express you can always console yourself that the other Dave will get His chance after November 2014 if your scenario turns out to be correct, and score the odd ‘i told you’ so brownie point in the process,
How’s the formation of the Alternative Green die in the ditch Party going???…
How’s the formation of the Alternative Green die in the ditch Party going???…
bad12
Such a party only exists in your hopeful imagination. Unlike the real life Green Party, which with its “pragmatic” approach, of down playing climate change, will condemn many to die in a ditch – literally.
CW: fossil fuels allows us to greatly multiply out the carrying capacity of the Earth – temporarily. You cannot harvest and process as many tonnes of wheat in a day from a hectare by hand or with horses, as you can with diesel.
And if Slippery gets back into power, then there will be NO power companies (all sold off) , The conservation areas will be strip mined for coal, and our coastlines blighted with oil rigs. and they will keep on borrowing until we are like Ireland was, and then the vultures will come in and strip out anything of value IE: Kiwi Fund and the Cullen fund, and then there will be nothing left and the greedies will be happy and look on a job well done. Thats what we have to look forward to.
Now some mitigation and a lot of adaptation is what we need to get on with.
Colonial Viper
Oh really?
Though you didn’t answer the question it sounds to me what you are really advocating is that we die surrendering. Even though in my opinion we are only at somewhere between stage 2/ and stage 3/.
Over many threads you have always argued for doing nothing to fight climate change. And you are still at it.
And since I don’t see any indication of the this mitigation work starting now. I presume you mean to leave this up to future generations as well.
And do you think these 3 or 4 billion human beings you dismiss so casually, will just go off and die quietly. Leaving us here in lifeboat New Zealand to go about building dykes and storm shelters?
Advocate surrendering if you like. Personally I am with Naomi Klein.
A great idea from Aussie union leader Dave Oliver; transferable work benefits. The ACTU want workers to take leave and other entitlements with them when they change jobs. Nice reminder of what a plonker Tony Abbott is, too.
I no longer receive notifications of replies to posts I have commented on despite the fact that I tick the “please notify me” box. I rather liked this function. This started [not] happening over the last month or so.
I am on Safari 5.1.7 and wondering if there is something from my side that is causing this; a setting I can change? My email is gmail and same question goes for that; is there a setting I can change?
We run Firefox on a PC running Windows 7, I have a gmail address and have not been getting threads for quite sometime. I assumed it was because the service was no longer offered.
Yeah i am running Firefox on the same and i am HAPPY that the flood of emails hitting my inbox has stopped, i like to take the time to scroll down the whole posts to have a good look at where the conversations in any particular thread are heading,
“Opposition parties were split on whether scrutiny of Parliament should increase.
The Green Party supported the proposal to extend the OIA to parliamentary business, but the Labour Party did not.
Labour’s open government spokeswoman, Clare Curran, said her party instead supported proactive release of documents to a dedicated website.”
As far as I’m concerned, that’s another point for the Greens. I’ve always been of the opinion that our views on politics should start from the assumption that politicians are NOT to be trusted and so it only seems logical to me that the more transparent a government is, the better it is for the people.
The level of accountability a government is “burdened” with only becomes indeed a burden if transparency is extreme. People (and by “people”, I mean politicians) always say that too much transparency means a government can’t function properly but I’m yet to see a government that’s failed because of the public knowing “too much”. Correct me if I’m wrong bu isn’t it usually the opposite that applies?
When issues like that are raised, I always remember mom asking, at a parent-teacher reunion years ago, for details on what one of my teacher’s plan for the year was. Her reply was “trust me”. Yep, the Brazilian educational system is great.
Yep another point to the Green Party, as a well entrenched Party in the Parliament the Green Party has nothing it want’s hidden while it is an Opposition Party and even less it want’s hidden at any point that the Green Party is part of a Government,
Labour can only recoup the lost point IF the statement by Clare Curran means that ALL Government documentation is released within a reasonable time-frame to a dedicated web-site,
If the proposed release is to include ALL Government documents within a reasonable time-frame then that is one of the better ideas that have come out of Labour for quite some time,
I would expect such releases to include Cabinet notes from the pen of the Cabinet Secretary as well…
You will cause the previous Labour Prime Minister extreme palpitations if your proposal was actioned.
I understand that her papers were handed over to the National Archives with the provision that they were not to be released for 100 years. I’m not sure that that would be classed as a “reasonable time frame”.
Lolz, yeah the comment is from the school of wishful thinking, but, we would expect that such a web-site would have revelations only from the time of it’s start date and other stuff prior to that would still be the subject of official information act requests,
The problem of course being who would police such a web-site to ensure it actually contained all the information required of it…
“Labour’s open government spokeswoman, Clare Curran, said her party instead supported proactive release of documents to a dedicated website.””
Something that I support as well. I have found out a lot of interesting stuff from the OIA requests I have been placing over the past couple of months…
The Los Angeles Times is reporting the State of California is set to sue Standard and Poor’s for 4 billion dollars.
“California has filed suit against Wall Street’s biggest credit rating agency, Standard & Poor’s, charging the firm with violating the state’s False Claims Act by using “magic numbers” and “guesses” to inflate ratings that ultimately cost California public pension funds an estimated $1 billion.
The action was filed Tuesday in San Francisco Superior Court and came a day after federal prosecutors filed suit against the bond-rating agency, alleging that S&P gave top marks to troubled mortgage-backed securities that later failed, helping to trigger the financial crisis.”
The New York Times reports that the suit was filed because settlement negotiations fell apart:
“Settlement talks between S.& P. and the Justice Department broke down in the last two weeks after prosecutors sought a penalty in excess of $1 billion and insisted that the company admit wrongdoing, several people with knowledge of the talks said. That amount would wipe out the profits of McGraw-Hill for an entire year. S.& P. had proposed a settlement of around $100 million, the people said.
S.& P. also sought a deal that would allow it to neither admit nor deny guilt; the government pressed for an admission of guilt to at least one count of fraud, said the people. S.& P. told prosecutors it could not admit guilt without exposing itself to liability in a multitude of civil cases.”
Incredibly, earlier attempts to sue ratings agencies for garbage ratings – supplied to purveyors of garbage for breath-taking fees and then trumpeted by said garbage-purveyors as ‘confirmation of rock-solid security’ – failed when the agencies claimed the protection of the First Amendment: ie freedom of speech! However it appears to be different this time, as the DoJ is claiming that S&P falsely represented to investors that its ratings were objective, independent and uninfluenced by any conflicts of interest; ie it seems to believe it can prove S&P didn’t believe what it was saying:
Among the flies in the ointment, though, is the fact that this really deflects attention away from the real guilty parties – the banks who knowing issued the garbage – and even offers them a defence as if anyone would really believe they were also taken in by S&P et al’s green-lighting their own products.
Moreover S&P and the other Agencies are already badly tainted so even if this goes against them, just watch them quietly fold, to rise again in six-months under a new name and, er, ‘business model’ washed shiny new.
Also, the Administration and the Fed hold a serious grudge against S&P for downgrading US debt.
Edit. Also note that it’s been years since these crimes were committed – 2007 and before. Further why aren’t S&P’s paying clients, the big banks who asked for these securities to be rated, also being prosecuted.
“Further why aren’t S&P’s paying clients, the big banks who asked for these securities to be rated, also being prosecuted.” – Colonial Viper
Ahem. A cynic might respond that the banks knew perfectly well these securities were garbage, and that they were knowingly ‘bribing’ the agencies for false favourable ratings. If the banks took action against the ratings agencies it would be thief against thief, and all likely come out in the wash. Hence their silence.
What is more puzzling is why none of the very big trust and pension funds etc. in the US who lost out badly in the crash haven’t brought this action. As I wrote, previous attempts have been made but were lost because, essentially, the ratings agencies were able to claim that all they were promulgating was their opinion which is, of course, no better than anybody else’s and they couldn’t be held responsible for it.
What’s really interesting in this case is that the prosecution is going for the fact that the agency actually knew the rating was false – ie a deliberate fraud – rather than just a lazy and/or incompetent opinion.
There was far more deliberate fraud than this going on in the ratings agencies. Of course in a prosecution like this, the DoJ may simply choose to prosecute the best representative instances.
However, in this talk, Bill Black makes it very clear that executives all through these ratings agencies knew what was going on, but given that their jobs and their bonuses depended on keeping their clients happy…
Lol, yep, don’t think I would hold my breath over anything to do with big money interests re-addressing their iniquities entirely! Yet, surely the more they do this type of litigation (and its being reported in newspapers), the more chance there is of more people realizing what cons are going on…perhaps….perhaps?…and only then, when public awareness is sufficient, is there a chance that the cons will be put a stop to?
The US Government , as you mention, is bringing fraud charges against S & P.
This suit looks awfully like political payback for S & P dropping the US credit rating from its AAA value. Two other credit rating companies also gave the same ratings to the mortgage backed securities. They were Fitch and Moodys. The US Justice Department is NOT claiming fraud by them. It is interesting that they did not lower the US rating from its AAA level.
Just coincidence you think? Political revenge seems much more likely. It’s rather like the way that, under most Presidents, the IRS selectively audits the President’s political opponents.
As I was typing this CV has also published this view. Oh well I’ll leave mine here and not waste the typing
You’re on to it mate. Check this out. Multi-millionaire hedge fund owner Michael Burry, formerly of Scion Capital, makes similar points about how he was targeted by the Feds.
Burry is right. We have been through the first crash. Everyone seems to have forgotten what happened only 5 years ago. It was followed by a struggling rally which is not a rally at all when you discount it for inflation. The next crash is imminent, a financial perfect storm. It will make 2007-2009 look like a summer shower. There will be massive political upheavals. The question is whether NZ becomes more democratic or more dictatorial. That will be our real challenge.
Yes. The action in this case is based on a very few actual securities only S&P rated, so only S&P can be sued. Moreover the Feds are only involved because the institution that lost money was federally insured, so the State lost money.
According to the NYT:
“The government is taking a novel approach by accusing S.& P. of defrauding a federally insured institution and therefore injuring the taxpayer.
Among others, the compliant includes the demise of Wescorp, a federally insured credit union in Los Angeles that went bankrupt after investing in mortgage securities rated by S.& P. Wescorp is included as one example of the contended fraud, and as a way to bring the case in California. The suit was filed in Federal District Court for the Central District of California.”
However if this approach is successful watch the floodgates open.
Yes. The action in this case is based on a very few actual securities only S&P rated, so only S&P can be sued. Moreover the Feds are only involved because the institution that lost money was federally insured, so the State lost money.
I believe your reasoning falls down as the Federal Govt also lost a shedload of money in Freddie/Fannie and AIG due to securities fraudulently rated by many different ratings agencies.
Perhaps these may be other cases in the pipeline or some cases which may have already been settled out of court.
The GFC is notable for the very small number of top financial executives who have been jailed. Compare this to the S&L scandal in the 90’s where hundreds of executives were sent to jail.
“I believe your reasoning falls down as the Federal Govt also lost a shedload of money in Freddie/Fannie and AIG due to securities fraudulently rated by many different ratings agencies.” – Colonial Viper.
I was claim otherwise. As regards Fannie and Freddie these were Goverment Sponsored Enterprises before the Government had to to take them over in part because of their losses on these garbage securities, so leading with them might raise awkward questions about (the lack of) Government supervision when these things were purchased. (And the aforementioned cynic might also suggest that perhaps certain individuals at the Fed. knew more about what was going on with Government-backed bodies buying top-price garbage from the banks than they would want coming to light now.)
As regards AIG its HQ is in New York, and I think the DoJ has very good reason for wanting to try this out in California rather than NY Courts.
Taking the action they have is nice and ‘safe’, in that it’s nice and far from Washington involving low-level players who aren’t likey to have any dirty Washington laundry to hang out.
My pet cynic might also pipe up that the most likely outcome of this action is to force S&P back to the negotiating table to agree a nice quiet settlement in which no-one who matters gets hurt.
How did you even come up with the idea of making a film about economics? I ask the director Jacob Kornbluth. “I know! People would roll their eyes when I told them. They’d say it’s a terrible idea for a film.” On paper it is, indeed, a terrible idea. A 90-minute documentary on income inequality: or why the rich have got richer and the rest of us haven’t (I say “us” because although it’s focused on America, we’re snapping at their heels) and which traces a line back to the 1970s, when things stopped getting better for the vast majority of ordinary working people and started getting worse.
“It always sounded so dry,” says Kornbluth. “But then I’d tell people it’s An Inconvenient Truth for the economy and they’d go, Ah!”
The Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management (MCDEM) has issued a Tsunami Potential Threat to New Zealand advisory for North Cape, Auckland West, East Cape, Gisborne, Auckland East, New Plymouth, Wellington.
The Potential Threat advisory will remain in effect until:
It is upgraded to a Tsunami Warning, or
A cancellation message is issued by MCDEM.
MCDEM and scientific advisors are in the process of assessing the situation to determine the severity of the threat to New Zealand. Updates will be issued at least hourly.
On an associated note, we’ve got to significantly build up NZ’s military and humanitarian capabilities to respond to these regional emergencies rapidly and thoroughly.
It is with sadness that i hear the news of the death of the construction company Mainzeal a player in the construction industry here in NZ for 40 years,
Placed into receivership today it is likely that this will result in the direct loss of another 400 jobs in the economy,
Also effected will be another 400 (at least), jobs as those contractors and sub-contractors who relied upon Mainzeal for work will now have none and are likely to be severely effected financially by the receivership of the company,
My second job as a youngster was as a labourer for Mainzeal putting the roof on the Waitangirua shopping mall…
Exactery! One thing that’s always amused me about the Nats and their ideology: They profess to be supporters of a free-market and champions of campetition, YET all the while shitting on small businesses, allowing take-overs and mergers and everything that results in the tendency towards monopolistic/duopolistic behaviour.
Thankfully now even the small business owner and the corner dairy are beginning to realise they’re full of shit.
I’m of the belief that monopolies (natural or otherwise – such as a rail network, or power grid, or telecommunications backbone, or water and gas reticuation) either need to be heavily regulated, OR better still – publicly owned.
I’m of the belief that monopolies (natural or otherwise – such as a rail network, or power grid, or telecommunications backbone, or water and gas reticuation) either need to be heavily regulated, OR better still – publicly owned.
Public ownership is the best option. The heavy regulation and the needed regulators makes the faux competition we end up with far more expensive.
Fletcher Building has been selected as the main contractor for the Christchurch rebuild, i don’t know if any of this main contractor stuff was put out to competitive tender,
Having such a rebuild and having Ozzy as a default option provides some hope of work for the employees of Mainzeal and even some of the subbie’s involved,
There is tho a world of dislocation involved in packing up and moving to Christchurch and many looking at the cost of doing this along with the cost of accommodation and wage structures will probably just leg it to Australia,
I worked for Mainzeal on a number of construction jobs round Wellington or for Mainzeal subbie’s, the Todd Motors build of the assembly plant was a eye opener for me as there must have been some form of labour agreement where X amount of labourers would be on the job, the boss would show up in the morning and direct me to bolt 16 bolts onto the hanging bases for the spray equipment and then disappear for the day,
That was my whole days work which was over in like half an hour,we labourers would amuse ourselves with little pastimes such as capturing any labourers from other subbies that happened to stray into our turf and if they had steel capped boots with the cap on the outside we would hold them down and weld their boots together,
Working for the steel subbie on Wellington’s St pats college taught me to never turn your back on a mobile crane as the boss had me hook up way too much steel on the chains and i just about wore the mobile crane jib on my nut as it tipped over,
Lolz, Haere Ra Mainzeal Construction it was nice knowing you…
I imagine they sleep quite easily – they’re not critical thinkers and with fuck all life experience – they’ve learned their ideology just as a parrot does. Polly wanna cracker…?
several I suspect. If I was so inclined to give the silly little munter an nano-eon of my time, no doubt it could be determined. I avoid even clicking on anything that has “kiwiblog’ because I wouldn’t want to provide him with the statistics he uses to justify himself
And people like Farrar try to spin the line “Is the manufacturing crisis manufactured?”
It is another example of Farrar,using incoherent statistics to a problem.Which is good reason for not listening or following the statistical analysis’s of any of the sockpuppets.
That’s allright! According to national party there are plenty more jobs out there!If there aren’t it must be Labours fault, or the Christchurch Earthquake,or the recession,or,or,or, oh anything that comes to mind.It certainly isn’t the fault of or courageous leader who apparently will “go down in history”(his words) for going to Waitangi year after year for some obscure reason.Escorted by how many DPS at big cost to the country!!!!!(I’m so brave) Anything to gazump David Shearers overnight stay at the Ratana Pa. Anyhow, if he is so courageous,how come he is the first to scuttle out of Parliament when he is caught out with many of his LIES!! Bart S Key. The man is tedious. AND he has a bad hairpiece.In the sunlight it is the same colour as maggie berrys dyed hair.
More job losses FFS.
Guess when the mining magnates arrive all “the people” will be ripe and ready to condemn any protests because they want jobs (which they won’t get anyway).
Nice and pliable. That’s how they want us. That’s how they are going to get us.
Cheers National, you really are the pits and thanks to all the people who voted for them for being so intensely gullible too.
Probably the effects of the last few years catching up with them, There was some crazy pricing going on when work was scarce. One project I know of was signed up completely tag free with no a ability to come back for time extensions due to weather. Basically madness when there are 1000’s of cubic meters of topsoil to be spread and hundreds of m2’s of concreting with a completion date in august. Coupled with a specification which forebode topsoil work in inclement weather.
I don’t know what was worked out in the end around penalties but I do know the project finished at least 2 months late and they were very late paying sub contractors. From what I was told they were holding the final payment from the principal as long as possible to claw back lost funds through interest. Made life bloody tough for a subs and suppliers of said subs…
At least there will be work to go into for most, although it will put downward pressure on wages with a bunch of skilled guys entering the job market and Fletchers are sharks…
Only problem is that there will be plenty of pain for sunnies as they will be the o es who suffer by being paid only a % of what is owed if at all, and any payment will be years away. Pity that I imagine that t he coy had been trading whilst insolvent that there will be little recourse form coy representatives, how often are managers/directors help accountable ? but may creditors suffer.
Just as we’ll the banks are well protected !!!
That activists should be careful because although Maori have legitimate grievances if marrys get too uppity white folk will lose the good will so watch out, shut up and don’t be so uppity.
Key with a very calculated blow of the dog whistle almost said stuff that was really rascist and demeaning. It is as if he turned his IQ down and then said some stuff that would appeal to inhabitants of swinging vote suburbia.
It is hard to put Shearer’s response in context or detail what he was replying to but he did say “if you are going to say these sorts of things fair enough and we all feel that way. But do it down on the Marae, not as you are going to get on a plane and fly out of here”.
Shearer needs to do way better than that. When Key does some racist dog whistling Shearer should never, ever say that “we all feel that way”.
That’s unbelievable, Shearer, what a thing to say, you’re not speaking for me,i
think Key’s yapade was disgraceful and showed a lack of respect,the
same for the clown waiting to be our PM.
Smart politics from Key. Gower was right on TV3, having a go at Titewhai doesn’t cost National votes.
Plus, Key knows his opponent all too well. National will spend the next two years dog-whistling like that, confident that Shearer will say “Er, yes, but, I mean …:”, winning no votes from the right and pissing off plenty of his supporters.
(but remember, if we all agree not to say this is happening, it won’t happen, and Shearer will be great … /heavy sarc)
“Do you agree with Key that Maori activists make waitangi day difficult for everyone to enjoy it as a celebration like you said yesterday?” is different from “Do you agree with Key that maori should stop seeing themeslves as disadvantaged and making a fuss?” but both questions can summarise Key’s speech.
But, you know, it’s not like Gower would do Shearer over because he’s such a nice, honourable man, so let’s get our pitchforks etc.
Rob, if David Shearer relies on Gower playing nice, then he cannot possibly lead Labour in an election campaign.
It’s late and I can’t be bothered to teach Shearer Media 101 for the umpteenth time, but the essence of it is – be smart, be prepared. That means before the questions (knowing what to expect) and after (making sure the message gets out).
If Shearer didn’t like Gower’s unfair question then I would expect his team to have rebutted within minutes, in all available outlets, and if he didn’t know what Gower was going to ask him, and didn’t have a line ready, then he should not be anywhere near the leader’s job.
In 2014, if polls are to be believed, Labour could be the front runners for the first time since 2005, or even 2002. So the media are going to “do Shearer over” every day. Labour can either put their faith in Gower’s fairness (ha!) or their leader’s ability to cope with unfairness.
FFS, it’s not “pitchforks”. It’s asking for a bare minimum competence, a basic grasp of modern campaigning.
PS … and for the record (feel free to check), Shearer’s comments were queried by many on Twitter within seconds, because that’s what happens – people watch the news, and respond.
Reckoning here that part of Shearer’s problem is that he is a mediator. he instinctively phrases things in a way that expresses that he undertsands both points of view, which is an admirable trait in a human being, but it’s not one that a political party leader should indulge in. His job isn’t to mediate between political differences. He’s supposed to represent and fight; convince that his party’s way is right and the govts’ wrong.
It was Shearer-speak. Trying to cover all bases, and in the process, undermining his own soundbite (which was a fair one – telling Key to front up, not take potshots and scarper).
If he still can’t grasp that TV news only ever allows you to make one point, not to add parentheses and qualifiers and “other hands”, then his media training is wasted.
It reveals how local authorities are being bullied into serving up schools for forced academisation, just to keep the Minister sweet.
How they were made to sound like raving Communists.
How they were inspected and found to have good teachers and governance and be improving – then at the behest of Gove they were suddenly re-inspected and found to be failing in all areas.
It shows who is set to profit from the privitisation of schools.
The documentary is based upon the English experience but it should (yes, I haven’t watched it yet) have lessons for NZ in it as well.
That was pretty laughable, Slippery the Prime Minister whining about protestors stealing His lime-light, dunno what the Slippery one was venting His spleen over as there was little protest at all this year at Waitangi,
Probably got an ear-full in the private meeting with Iwi Leaders that is still resonating around His empty suitcase of intellectual rigor with the Maori Council also attending i can well imagine the discussion about water rights would have positively sizzled…
There is an article in stuff business section titled ‘ Ministry stone-walling on SkyCity-Labour.
Sorry can’t link.
National up to their old tricks,by the look of it.
Hi LPrent,
I hope you are having a really good relaxing break in good company somewhere beautiful.
When you are ready to return to the fray – there is something odd going on with the edit function. Tonight I managed to create two comments by editing one. I am dead tired, and am (more) prone to mess up when I am, but when I edited a post it created a duplicate. I definitely didn’t hit send twice.
Colonial Viper
You have done a lot of thinking on climate change and the way forward. What books, blogs do you find most effective to summarise the situation in a practical manner and advise on ways we can move to reduce our wastefulness of whatever and what we should be aiming for?
Now I have to admit that my focus is not so much on climate change per se, but on the massive energy and resource depletion facing our civilisation. That depletion is going to make how we deal with climate change much more difficult.
Also, reading up about this stuff can sometimes feel a little bit of a ‘downer’, but in actual fact there’s a pretty exciting world of innovation and community building coming up.
🙂 yep definitely. Max and Stacy, the dynamic duo. Have you discovered Zero Hedge? Also check out Richard D Wolff on youtube and his blog site for a good dose of democratic socialism.
I don’t get this, wtf is going on here – how can a company like mainzeal go down with all of the supposed building going or about to get going in chch. Although I spoke to a friend down there who said the pay is shit and he’s off to oz.
Mainzeal director Richard Yan said the company could no longer continue trading due to a “series of events that had adversely affected the company’s financial position”, combined with a general decline in commercial construction activity and lack of shareholder support.
You say it’s all right, sometime, we’ll get it done.
Well sometimes you just suck and I’ve got the fight to say.
You should never grab at something you couldn’t take.
You say you’re all right, sometime, you’ll get it done.
And sometimes you just say I’ve got to learn to wait.
Well you should never hit on something you can’t break.
What you gonna wash away?
How you gonna wash me way?
For no better reason than I’ve got no reason to fake.
I got a reason I got the will and the way.
No helps coming, no one’s running away.
Firing treason, ‘here with the freaks and the snakes.
What you gonna wash away?
How you gonna wash me way?
You say he’s all right, sometime, he’ll get it done.
Well sometime is just words far too easy to say.
You should never try on something if you can’t even fake.
You say it’s all right, sometime, you’ll get it done.
And sometimes you just say I’ve got to learn to heal.
Well you should never count on something you can’t steal.
What you gonna wash away?
How you gonna wash me way?
For no better reason than I’ve got no reason to fade.
I got a meaning, I got the will and the way.
New hope running, no one’s staking stakes.
Firing reason, ‘here with the freaks and the snakes.
What you gonna wash away?
How you gonna wash me way?
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 27 were:1. The Minister for Ford Rangers strikes againTransport Minister Simeon Brown was again the busiest of the Cabinet ministers this week, announcing an ...
You got a fast carAnd I want a ticket to anywhereMaybe we make a dealMaybe together we can get somewhereAny place is betterYesterday’s newsletter, Trust In Me, on the report of abuse in state care, and by religious organisations, between 1950 and 2019, coupled with the hypocrisy of Christopher Luxon ...
New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. ...
The ‘50 Shades of Green’ farmers’ protest in 2019 was heavy on climate change denial, but five years on, scepticism and criticism about the idea that pine forests can save us is growing across the board. File photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate ...
This morning the sky was bright.The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.Their calls are clear and beautiful.Just some random thoughts:MāoriPaul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises ...
In 2003, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, ruling that Māori customary title over the foreshore and seabed had not been universally extinguished, and that the Māori Land Court could determine claims and confirm title if the facts supported it. This kicked off the ...
Earlier this week at Parliament, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was applauded for saying that the response to the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care had to be “bigger than politics.” True, but the fine words, apologies and “we hear you” messages will soon ring ...
TL;DR: In news breaking this morning:The Ministry of Education is cutting $2 billion from its school building programme so the National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government has enough money to deliver tax cuts; The Government has quietly lowered its child poverty reduction targets to make them easier to achieve;Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ’s ...
Kia ora. These are some stories that caught our eye this week – as always, feel free to share yours in the comments. Our header image this week (via Eke Panuku) shows the planned upgrade for the Karanga Plaza Tidal Swimming Steps. The week in Greater Auckland On ...
1. What's not to love about the way the Harris campaign is turning things around?a. Nothingb. Love all of itc. God what a reliefd. Not that it will be by any means easye. All of the above 2. Documents released by the Ministry of Health show Associate Health Minister Casey ...
Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking about the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Carereport released this week, and with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on a UN push to not recognise carbon offset markets and ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced$802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...
The northern expressway extension from Warkworth to Whangarei is likely to require radical changes to legislation if it is going to be built within the foreseeable future. The Government’s powers to purchase land, the planning process and current restrictions on road tolling are all going to need to be changed ...
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFirst they came for the doctors But I was confused by the numbers and costs So I didn't speak up Then they came for our police and nurses And I didn't think we could afford those costs anyway So I ...
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
Te Rangi e tu nei (The sky above us) Te Papa e takoto nei (The land beneath us) Tatou katoa te hunga ora (To us all the living) Tena koutou katoa (Greetings) ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
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Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
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President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
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Only one of these provides good advice
For the uninitiated and those looking for good advice see: reddit
“British lawmakers on have voted overwhelmingly in favour of a bill to legalize same-sex marriage championed by Prime Minister David Cameron,………..lawmakers voted 400 to 175”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10863748
Wonder if this will happen so conclusively here or are we more conservative than UK?
Oh fuck. Is that really an email from David Shearer ‘personally’ – ie, they’ve gone to the bother of inserting christian names in the subject linen – wishing me a ‘Happy Waitangi Day’?
Yes it is.
Got one too, and one for my beloved as well.
General mailout.
Well Bill, you got to be glad to see the improvement in IT capability, right? Yeah I got the email(s) from Shearer as well.
Didn’t this “Happy Waitangi Day” idea pop up last year with Shearer as well?
Does it have a ‘reply to’ function?
😈
CW, to pass on your congratulations for winning the confidence of caucus I’m sure.
A sure footed Key sensing the nation’s mood over Waitangi, wipes the floor with Shearer.
Yeah Key and his PR team still do their job well. Of that there is no doubt.
I dread the day there is ever a head to head leaders debate. Unfortunately, going on current performance it most likely will result in a Key walkover.
Jenny, are you planning on voting for Slippery at the next election then???…
No. But I imagine that on David Shearer’s woeful performance to date, a lot of people might. And a lot who would vote Labour will stay at home on the day.
Leadership is important, and Labour’s best leader is on the back bench replaced by some sort of politically inexperienced back room international conservative bureaucrat, who has been parachuted in, despite being completely lacking in charisma and with no obvious aptitude for the job.
Yes they will be voting Slippery for what he might,depending of course upon the NZ Supreme Court, put into their back pockets, Labour having failed to move them with a prior bid on providing cheap home ownership,
Oh well to sidestep such defeatism as you express you can always console yourself that the other Dave will get His chance after November 2014 if your scenario turns out to be correct, and score the odd ‘i told you’ so brownie point in the process,
How’s the formation of the Alternative Green die in the ditch Party going???…
Such a party only exists in your hopeful imagination. Unlike the real life Green Party, which with its “pragmatic” approach, of down playing climate change, will condemn many to die in a ditch – literally.
The long term sustainable population of this planet is under 2B, at a rough estimate. We’ve overshot that by 5B already, and climbing.
Regardless of what the pollies do – which I am betting is closer to nothing than something – we are going to lose a lot of people eventually.
I have a question for you CV.
At which stage of the struggle against climate change do you think we are at now?
Where does the 2B figure come from CV?
CW: fossil fuels allows us to greatly multiply out the carrying capacity of the Earth – temporarily. You cannot harvest and process as many tonnes of wheat in a day from a hectare by hand or with horses, as you can with diesel.
Check out these links
http://www.holon.se/folke/kurs/logexp/carrying.shtml
http://canada.theoildrum.com/node/2516
In 100 hundred years I’m fairly confident that the world’s population will be closer to 2B than 10B.
The human race lost this one 5-10 years ago. Now some mitigation and a lot of adaptation is what we need to get on with.
And if Slippery gets back into power, then there will be NO power companies (all sold off) , The conservation areas will be strip mined for coal, and our coastlines blighted with oil rigs. and they will keep on borrowing until we are like Ireland was, and then the vultures will come in and strip out anything of value IE: Kiwi Fund and the Cullen fund, and then there will be nothing left and the greedies will be happy and look on a job well done. Thats what we have to look forward to.
Oh really?
Though you didn’t answer the question it sounds to me what you are really advocating is that we die surrendering. Even though in my opinion we are only at somewhere between stage 2/ and stage 3/.
Over many threads you have always argued for doing nothing to fight climate change. And you are still at it.
And since I don’t see any indication of the this mitigation work starting now. I presume you mean to leave this up to future generations as well.
And do you think these 3 or 4 billion human beings you dismiss so casually, will just go off and die quietly. Leaving us here in lifeboat New Zealand to go about building dykes and storm shelters?
Advocate surrendering if you like. Personally I am with Naomi Klein.
“I’d Rather Fight Like Hell”
Arguing against your suggestions of bailing out the Titanic with a tin cup is actually very easy to do.
Good on ya. Hope that works out well for you. I read she’s great company.
Good ole Claire!!!
A great idea from Aussie union leader Dave Oliver; transferable work benefits. The ACTU want workers to take leave and other entitlements with them when they change jobs. Nice reminder of what a plonker Tony Abbott is, too.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/union-fight-on-work-rights-20130205-2dwn7.html
bad day for KP
Socially corrosive…wah wah wah
@ lprent
I no longer receive notifications of replies to posts I have commented on despite the fact that I tick the “please notify me” box. I rather liked this function. This started [not] happening over the last month or so.
I am on Safari 5.1.7 and wondering if there is something from my side that is causing this; a setting I can change? My email is gmail and same question goes for that; is there a setting I can change?
I run Firefox on a Mac and the same thing has happened.
We run Firefox on a PC running Windows 7, I have a gmail address and have not been getting threads for quite sometime. I assumed it was because the service was no longer offered.
Yeah i am running Firefox on the same and i am HAPPY that the flood of emails hitting my inbox has stopped, i like to take the time to scroll down the whole posts to have a good look at where the conversations in any particular thread are heading,
lol, I sometimes found it annoying too! Yet overall I ended up reading more comments when they arrived via email!
“Self-interest drives OIA review”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10863710
“Opposition parties were split on whether scrutiny of Parliament should increase.
The Green Party supported the proposal to extend the OIA to parliamentary business, but the Labour Party did not.
Labour’s open government spokeswoman, Clare Curran, said her party instead supported proactive release of documents to a dedicated website.”
As far as I’m concerned, that’s another point for the Greens. I’ve always been of the opinion that our views on politics should start from the assumption that politicians are NOT to be trusted and so it only seems logical to me that the more transparent a government is, the better it is for the people.
The level of accountability a government is “burdened” with only becomes indeed a burden if transparency is extreme. People (and by “people”, I mean politicians) always say that too much transparency means a government can’t function properly but I’m yet to see a government that’s failed because of the public knowing “too much”. Correct me if I’m wrong bu isn’t it usually the opposite that applies?
When issues like that are raised, I always remember mom asking, at a parent-teacher reunion years ago, for details on what one of my teacher’s plan for the year was. Her reply was “trust me”. Yep, the Brazilian educational system is great.
Yep another point to the Green Party, as a well entrenched Party in the Parliament the Green Party has nothing it want’s hidden while it is an Opposition Party and even less it want’s hidden at any point that the Green Party is part of a Government,
Labour can only recoup the lost point IF the statement by Clare Curran means that ALL Government documentation is released within a reasonable time-frame to a dedicated web-site,
If the proposed release is to include ALL Government documents within a reasonable time-frame then that is one of the better ideas that have come out of Labour for quite some time,
I would expect such releases to include Cabinet notes from the pen of the Cabinet Secretary as well…
You will cause the previous Labour Prime Minister extreme palpitations if your proposal was actioned.
I understand that her papers were handed over to the National Archives with the provision that they were not to be released for 100 years. I’m not sure that that would be classed as a “reasonable time frame”.
Lolz, yeah the comment is from the school of wishful thinking, but, we would expect that such a web-site would have revelations only from the time of it’s start date and other stuff prior to that would still be the subject of official information act requests,
The problem of course being who would police such a web-site to ensure it actually contained all the information required of it…
I’d settle for the release of the names of those “high ranking Labour MPs” who did the character assassination on Cunliffe when he was in Europe.
Or maybe Claire Curren could “officially inform” us who inspired her to try to drive Colonial Viper out of the LP.
Keep truckin’ Greens. You are only 14 MPs but you’re the only real opposition party we’ve got.
Can i ask you,are you a member, of the Labour Party that is…
Well said AmaKiwi
+1
“Labour’s open government spokeswoman, Clare Curran, said her party instead supported proactive release of documents to a dedicated website.””
Something that I support as well. I have found out a lot of interesting stuff from the OIA requests I have been placing over the past couple of months…
The Los Angeles Times is reporting the State of California is set to sue Standard and Poor’s for 4 billion dollars.
“California has filed suit against Wall Street’s biggest credit rating agency, Standard & Poor’s, charging the firm with violating the state’s False Claims Act by using “magic numbers” and “guesses” to inflate ratings that ultimately cost California public pension funds an estimated $1 billion.
The action was filed Tuesday in San Francisco Superior Court and came a day after federal prosecutors filed suit against the bond-rating agency, alleging that S&P gave top marks to troubled mortgage-backed securities that later failed, helping to trigger the financial crisis.”
@ScottGN
That sounds like a promising move. Cheers for the info.
Don’t hold your breath.
The New York Times reports that the suit was filed because settlement negotiations fell apart:
“Settlement talks between S.& P. and the Justice Department broke down in the last two weeks after prosecutors sought a penalty in excess of $1 billion and insisted that the company admit wrongdoing, several people with knowledge of the talks said. That amount would wipe out the profits of McGraw-Hill for an entire year. S.& P. had proposed a settlement of around $100 million, the people said.
S.& P. also sought a deal that would allow it to neither admit nor deny guilt; the government pressed for an admission of guilt to at least one count of fraud, said the people. S.& P. told prosecutors it could not admit guilt without exposing itself to liability in a multitude of civil cases.”
Incredibly, earlier attempts to sue ratings agencies for garbage ratings – supplied to purveyors of garbage for breath-taking fees and then trumpeted by said garbage-purveyors as ‘confirmation of rock-solid security’ – failed when the agencies claimed the protection of the First Amendment: ie freedom of speech! However it appears to be different this time, as the DoJ is claiming that S&P falsely represented to investors that its ratings were objective, independent and uninfluenced by any conflicts of interest; ie it seems to believe it can prove S&P didn’t believe what it was saying:
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-02-05/s-and-p-won-t-employ-first-amendment-defense-in-u-dot-s-dot-ratings-lawsuit
Among the flies in the ointment, though, is the fact that this really deflects attention away from the real guilty parties – the banks who knowing issued the garbage – and even offers them a defence as if anyone would really believe they were also taken in by S&P et al’s green-lighting their own products.
Moreover S&P and the other Agencies are already badly tainted so even if this goes against them, just watch them quietly fold, to rise again in six-months under a new name and, er, ‘business model’ washed shiny new.
Also, the Administration and the Fed hold a serious grudge against S&P for downgrading US debt.
Edit. Also note that it’s been years since these crimes were committed – 2007 and before. Further why aren’t S&P’s paying clients, the big banks who asked for these securities to be rated, also being prosecuted.
“Further why aren’t S&P’s paying clients, the big banks who asked for these securities to be rated, also being prosecuted.” – Colonial Viper
Ahem. A cynic might respond that the banks knew perfectly well these securities were garbage, and that they were knowingly ‘bribing’ the agencies for false favourable ratings. If the banks took action against the ratings agencies it would be thief against thief, and all likely come out in the wash. Hence their silence.
What is more puzzling is why none of the very big trust and pension funds etc. in the US who lost out badly in the crash haven’t brought this action. As I wrote, previous attempts have been made but were lost because, essentially, the ratings agencies were able to claim that all they were promulgating was their opinion which is, of course, no better than anybody else’s and they couldn’t be held responsible for it.
What’s really interesting in this case is that the prosecution is going for the fact that the agency actually knew the rating was false – ie a deliberate fraud – rather than just a lazy and/or incompetent opinion.
There was far more deliberate fraud than this going on in the ratings agencies. Of course in a prosecution like this, the DoJ may simply choose to prosecute the best representative instances.
However, in this talk, Bill Black makes it very clear that executives all through these ratings agencies knew what was going on, but given that their jobs and their bonuses depended on keeping their clients happy…
Lol, yep, don’t think I would hold my breath over anything to do with big money interests re-addressing their iniquities entirely! Yet, surely the more they do this type of litigation (and its being reported in newspapers), the more chance there is of more people realizing what cons are going on…perhaps….perhaps?…and only then, when public awareness is sufficient, is there a chance that the cons will be put a stop to?
The US Government , as you mention, is bringing fraud charges against S & P.
This suit looks awfully like political payback for S & P dropping the US credit rating from its AAA value. Two other credit rating companies also gave the same ratings to the mortgage backed securities. They were Fitch and Moodys. The US Justice Department is NOT claiming fraud by them. It is interesting that they did not lower the US rating from its AAA level.
Just coincidence you think? Political revenge seems much more likely. It’s rather like the way that, under most Presidents, the IRS selectively audits the President’s political opponents.
As I was typing this CV has also published this view. Oh well I’ll leave mine here and not waste the typing
You’re on to it mate. Check this out. Multi-millionaire hedge fund owner Michael Burry, formerly of Scion Capital, makes similar points about how he was targeted by the Feds.
Colonial Viper, excellent link.
Burry is right. We have been through the first crash. Everyone seems to have forgotten what happened only 5 years ago. It was followed by a struggling rally which is not a rally at all when you discount it for inflation. The next crash is imminent, a financial perfect storm. It will make 2007-2009 look like a summer shower. There will be massive political upheavals. The question is whether NZ becomes more democratic or more dictatorial. That will be our real challenge.
“Just coincidence you think?” – alwyn.
Yes. The action in this case is based on a very few actual securities only S&P rated, so only S&P can be sued. Moreover the Feds are only involved because the institution that lost money was federally insured, so the State lost money.
According to the NYT:
“The government is taking a novel approach by accusing S.& P. of defrauding a federally insured institution and therefore injuring the taxpayer.
Among others, the compliant includes the demise of Wescorp, a federally insured credit union in Los Angeles that went bankrupt after investing in mortgage securities rated by S.& P. Wescorp is included as one example of the contended fraud, and as a way to bring the case in California. The suit was filed in Federal District Court for the Central District of California.”
However if this approach is successful watch the floodgates open.
I believe your reasoning falls down as the Federal Govt also lost a shedload of money in Freddie/Fannie and AIG due to securities fraudulently rated by many different ratings agencies.
Perhaps these may be other cases in the pipeline or some cases which may have already been settled out of court.
The GFC is notable for the very small number of top financial executives who have been jailed. Compare this to the S&L scandal in the 90’s where hundreds of executives were sent to jail.
“I believe your reasoning falls down as the Federal Govt also lost a shedload of money in Freddie/Fannie and AIG due to securities fraudulently rated by many different ratings agencies.” – Colonial Viper.
I was claim otherwise. As regards Fannie and Freddie these were Goverment Sponsored Enterprises before the Government had to to take them over in part because of their losses on these garbage securities, so leading with them might raise awkward questions about (the lack of) Government supervision when these things were purchased. (And the aforementioned cynic might also suggest that perhaps certain individuals at the Fed. knew more about what was going on with Government-backed bodies buying top-price garbage from the banks than they would want coming to light now.)
As regards AIG its HQ is in New York, and I think the DoJ has very good reason for wanting to try this out in California rather than NY Courts.
Taking the action they have is nice and ‘safe’, in that it’s nice and far from Washington involving low-level players who aren’t likey to have any dirty Washington laundry to hang out.
My pet cynic might also pipe up that the most likely outcome of this action is to force S&P back to the negotiating table to agree a nice quiet settlement in which no-one who matters gets hurt.
Inequality for All – another Inconvenient Truth?
Sounds like a documentary to watch out for.
Tsunami Waring
That earthquake was damn shallow as well – a mere 5km and 8 magnitude.
The Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management (MCDEM) has issued a Tsunami Potential Threat to New Zealand advisory for North Cape, Auckland West, East Cape, Gisborne, Auckland East, New Plymouth, Wellington.
The Potential Threat advisory will remain in effect until:
It is upgraded to a Tsunami Warning, or
A cancellation message is issued by MCDEM.
MCDEM and scientific advisors are in the process of assessing the situation to determine the severity of the threat to New Zealand. Updates will be issued at least hourly.
MCDEM
Hopefully we can get help to the Pacific in fairly short order.
On an associated note, we’ve got to significantly build up NZ’s military and humanitarian capabilities to respond to these regional emergencies rapidly and thoroughly.
It is with sadness that i hear the news of the death of the construction company Mainzeal a player in the construction industry here in NZ for 40 years,
Placed into receivership today it is likely that this will result in the direct loss of another 400 jobs in the economy,
Also effected will be another 400 (at least), jobs as those contractors and sub-contractors who relied upon Mainzeal for work will now have none and are likely to be severely effected financially by the receivership of the company,
My second job as a youngster was as a labourer for Mainzeal putting the roof on the Waitangirua shopping mall…
With an entire city to rebuild, how the hell can a construction company go into receivership?
This is an economy of winners and losers. In this case, a very few big winners, and also some big losers.
Exactery! One thing that’s always amused me about the Nats and their ideology: They profess to be supporters of a free-market and champions of campetition, YET all the while shitting on small businesses, allowing take-overs and mergers and everything that results in the tendency towards monopolistic/duopolistic behaviour.
Thankfully now even the small business owner and the corner dairy are beginning to realise they’re full of shit.
I’m of the belief that monopolies (natural or otherwise – such as a rail network, or power grid, or telecommunications backbone, or water and gas reticuation) either need to be heavily regulated, OR better still – publicly owned.
BTW (as they say in the connected world) Hopefully at the moment, people realise Fletchers and Fulton Hogan are those currently in favour.
Public ownership is the best option. The heavy regulation and the needed regulators makes the faux competition we end up with far more expensive.
I know, it’s almost as if they’re…..lying!
Fletcher Building has been selected as the main contractor for the Christchurch rebuild, i don’t know if any of this main contractor stuff was put out to competitive tender,
Having such a rebuild and having Ozzy as a default option provides some hope of work for the employees of Mainzeal and even some of the subbie’s involved,
There is tho a world of dislocation involved in packing up and moving to Christchurch and many looking at the cost of doing this along with the cost of accommodation and wage structures will probably just leg it to Australia,
I worked for Mainzeal on a number of construction jobs round Wellington or for Mainzeal subbie’s, the Todd Motors build of the assembly plant was a eye opener for me as there must have been some form of labour agreement where X amount of labourers would be on the job, the boss would show up in the morning and direct me to bolt 16 bolts onto the hanging bases for the spray equipment and then disappear for the day,
That was my whole days work which was over in like half an hour,we labourers would amuse ourselves with little pastimes such as capturing any labourers from other subbies that happened to stray into our turf and if they had steel capped boots with the cap on the outside we would hold them down and weld their boots together,
Working for the steel subbie on Wellington’s St pats college taught me to never turn your back on a mobile crane as the boss had me hook up way too much steel on the chains and i just about wore the mobile crane jib on my nut as it tipped over,
Lolz, Haere Ra Mainzeal Construction it was nice knowing you…
@Tiresias 11.1
+1
And those contractors and sub-contractors are unsecured creditors so they won’t be getting the money for the work that they’ve done.
And people like Farrar try to spin the line “Is the manufacturing crisis manufactured?”
How do people like him sleep at night?
Unbelievable.
I imagine they sleep quite easily – they’re not critical thinkers and with fuck all life experience – they’ve learned their ideology just as a parrot does. Polly wanna cracker…?
Who is Farrar’s paymaster?
several I suspect. If I was so inclined to give the silly little munter an nano-eon of my time, no doubt it could be determined. I avoid even clicking on anything that has “kiwiblog’ because I wouldn’t want to provide him with the statistics he uses to justify himself
And people like Farrar try to spin the line “Is the manufacturing crisis manufactured?”
It is another example of Farrar,using incoherent statistics to a problem.Which is good reason for not listening or following the statistical analysis’s of any of the sockpuppets.
That’s allright! According to national party there are plenty more jobs out there!If there aren’t it must be Labours fault, or the Christchurch Earthquake,or the recession,or,or,or, oh anything that comes to mind.It certainly isn’t the fault of or courageous leader who apparently will “go down in history”(his words) for going to Waitangi year after year for some obscure reason.Escorted by how many DPS at big cost to the country!!!!!(I’m so brave) Anything to gazump David Shearers overnight stay at the Ratana Pa. Anyhow, if he is so courageous,how come he is the first to scuttle out of Parliament when he is caught out with many of his LIES!! Bart S Key. The man is tedious. AND he has a bad hairpiece.In the sunlight it is the same colour as maggie berrys dyed hair.
More job losses FFS.
Guess when the mining magnates arrive all “the people” will be ripe and ready to condemn any protests because they want jobs (which they won’t get anyway).
Nice and pliable. That’s how they want us. That’s how they are going to get us.
Cheers National, you really are the pits and thanks to all the people who voted for them for being so intensely gullible too.
Probably the effects of the last few years catching up with them, There was some crazy pricing going on when work was scarce. One project I know of was signed up completely tag free with no a ability to come back for time extensions due to weather. Basically madness when there are 1000’s of cubic meters of topsoil to be spread and hundreds of m2’s of concreting with a completion date in august. Coupled with a specification which forebode topsoil work in inclement weather.
I don’t know what was worked out in the end around penalties but I do know the project finished at least 2 months late and they were very late paying sub contractors. From what I was told they were holding the final payment from the principal as long as possible to claw back lost funds through interest. Made life bloody tough for a subs and suppliers of said subs…
At least there will be work to go into for most, although it will put downward pressure on wages with a bunch of skilled guys entering the job market and Fletchers are sharks…
Only problem is that there will be plenty of pain for sunnies as they will be the o es who suffer by being paid only a % of what is owed if at all, and any payment will be years away. Pity that I imagine that t he coy had been trading whilst insolvent that there will be little recourse form coy representatives, how often are managers/directors help accountable ? but may creditors suffer.
Just as we’ll the banks are well protected !!!
Did I hear Shearer on 3 News saying “we all agree……” re Key’s Waitangi comments about activists ?
Would that surprise you?
After all, people like Key. If Shearer just agrees with what Key says then obviously people will like him too.
That’s how popularity works, right?
In the walnut sized minds of a few MPs and staffers yes. But to the rest of us no …
What exactly did Shearer agree with Key about?
That activists should be careful because although Maori have legitimate grievances if marrys get too uppity white folk will lose the good will so watch out, shut up and don’t be so uppity.
Please, please say that is not a verbatim quote …
Not verbatim.
Oh, thank God for that. 😯
I just saw it. The video is at http://www.3news.co.nz/John-Key-says-Waitangi-protesters-short-sighted/tabid/370/articleID/285785/Default.aspx
Key with a very calculated blow of the dog whistle almost said stuff that was really rascist and demeaning. It is as if he turned his IQ down and then said some stuff that would appeal to inhabitants of swinging vote suburbia.
It is hard to put Shearer’s response in context or detail what he was replying to but he did say “if you are going to say these sorts of things fair enough and we all feel that way. But do it down on the Marae, not as you are going to get on a plane and fly out of here”.
Shearer needs to do way better than that. When Key does some racist dog whistling Shearer should never, ever say that “we all feel that way”.
That’s unbelievable, Shearer, what a thing to say, you’re not speaking for me,i
think Key’s yapade was disgraceful and showed a lack of respect,the
same for the clown waiting to be our PM.
I’m not even going to bother at this stage MS. Talk about gifting the Maori seats to Mana on a plate.
Smart politics from Key. Gower was right on TV3, having a go at Titewhai doesn’t cost National votes.
Plus, Key knows his opponent all too well. National will spend the next two years dog-whistling like that, confident that Shearer will say “Er, yes, but, I mean …:”, winning no votes from the right and pissing off plenty of his supporters.
(but remember, if we all agree not to say this is happening, it won’t happen, and Shearer will be great … /heavy sarc)
a kick from the right, a kick from the left – nah same team just different legs.
Does anyone know what Gower actually asked him?
“Do you agree with Key that Maori activists make waitangi day difficult for everyone to enjoy it as a celebration like you said yesterday?” is different from “Do you agree with Key that maori should stop seeing themeslves as disadvantaged and making a fuss?” but both questions can summarise Key’s speech.
But, you know, it’s not like Gower would do Shearer over because he’s such a nice, honourable man, so let’s get our pitchforks etc.
Rob, if David Shearer relies on Gower playing nice, then he cannot possibly lead Labour in an election campaign.
It’s late and I can’t be bothered to teach Shearer Media 101 for the umpteenth time, but the essence of it is – be smart, be prepared. That means before the questions (knowing what to expect) and after (making sure the message gets out).
If Shearer didn’t like Gower’s unfair question then I would expect his team to have rebutted within minutes, in all available outlets, and if he didn’t know what Gower was going to ask him, and didn’t have a line ready, then he should not be anywhere near the leader’s job.
In 2014, if polls are to be believed, Labour could be the front runners for the first time since 2005, or even 2002. So the media are going to “do Shearer over” every day. Labour can either put their faith in Gower’s fairness (ha!) or their leader’s ability to cope with unfairness.
FFS, it’s not “pitchforks”. It’s asking for a bare minimum competence, a basic grasp of modern campaigning.
PS … and for the record (feel free to check), Shearer’s comments were queried by many on Twitter within seconds, because that’s what happens – people watch the news, and respond.
Whereas Labour respond late, or not at all.
Exactly Gobsmacked.
Reckoning here that part of Shearer’s problem is that he is a mediator. he instinctively phrases things in a way that expresses that he undertsands both points of view, which is an admirable trait in a human being, but it’s not one that a political party leader should indulge in. His job isn’t to mediate between political differences. He’s supposed to represent and fight; convince that his party’s way is right and the govts’ wrong.
That dog whistle never leaves his lips! He’s not David Shearer, he’s David Shepherd.
You did North, and so did I. Ye gods, what is he going to say next.
It was Shearer-speak. Trying to cover all bases, and in the process, undermining his own soundbite (which was a fair one – telling Key to front up, not take potshots and scarper).
If he still can’t grasp that TV news only ever allows you to make one point, not to add parentheses and qualifiers and “other hands”, then his media training is wasted.
Aye, if he did not say “fair enough and we all feel that way” the statement would have been fine.
Sadly I’m finding it harder and harder to believe that he isn’t just saying what he really thinks.
If you’ve got a spare hour you may find this worth watching:
The Parents, The Politician and The Moneymakers – A warning for NZ schools
The documentary is based upon the English experience but it should (yes, I haven’t watched it yet) have lessons for NZ in it as well.
it’s rather jaw-dropping isn’t it, the way the school is bullied. I was shocked, and I’m not easily shocked.
That was pretty laughable, Slippery the Prime Minister whining about protestors stealing His lime-light, dunno what the Slippery one was venting His spleen over as there was little protest at all this year at Waitangi,
Probably got an ear-full in the private meeting with Iwi Leaders that is still resonating around His empty suitcase of intellectual rigor with the Maori Council also attending i can well imagine the discussion about water rights would have positively sizzled…
@ bad12
Key WANTED protests. Protests would have given him real headlines: “PM to protestors: Fuck off you lazy sods . . . “
There is an article in stuff business section titled ‘ Ministry stone-walling on SkyCity-Labour.
Sorry can’t link.
National up to their old tricks,by the look of it.
You can do an ordinary cut and paste job VV.
Open article in normal way.
Right click on stuff address/article heading… at top left of screen.
Left click on ‘copy’.
Arrow back and re-open The Standard…
Right click in your comment box.
Left click on ‘paste’.
And this is what you should get:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/8265860/Ministry-stone-walling-on-SkyCity-Labour
Note: it doesn’t go blue until you submit comment.
\Small pdf.
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf
Hi, thanks Anne, I’m still working on it,it manages to vanish on me,when i arrow
to the standard box, sigh,i’ll keep working at it. 🙂
Hi LPrent,
I hope you are having a really good relaxing break in good company somewhere beautiful.
When you are ready to return to the fray – there is something odd going on with the edit function. Tonight I managed to create two comments by editing one. I am dead tired, and am (more) prone to mess up when I am, but when I edited a post it created a duplicate. I definitely didn’t hit send twice.
Ta
Colonial Viper
You have done a lot of thinking on climate change and the way forward. What books, blogs do you find most effective to summarise the situation in a practical manner and advise on ways we can move to reduce our wastefulness of whatever and what we should be aiming for?
Hey mate, despite these links being a little US-centric:
Try a couple of the books by John Michael Greer. The Long Descent and the Eco-technic Future are good to start with. You can order his books here
http://redroom.com/member/john-michael-greer
And for free, check out his blog here
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.co.nz/
What he writes is fascinating but what his commentators leave is equally astonishing at times.
Dmitry Orlov is excellent for helping breakdown particular cultural outlooks on the trouble we find ourselves in:
http://fora.tv/2009/02/13/Dmitry_Orlov_Social_Collapse_Best_Practices
Now I have to admit that my focus is not so much on climate change per se, but on the massive energy and resource depletion facing our civilisation. That depletion is going to make how we deal with climate change much more difficult.
Also, reading up about this stuff can sometimes feel a little bit of a ‘downer’, but in actual fact there’s a pretty exciting world of innovation and community building coming up.
Re: the archdruid blog – if you find it interesting enough, start reading his posts from a few years back right through to the current day.
Do you watch The Keiser Report, CV? If not, have a gander, it’s hilarious and informative but possibly panders to the gold bug angle a bit.
🙂 yep definitely. Max and Stacy, the dynamic duo. Have you discovered Zero Hedge? Also check out Richard D Wolff on youtube and his blog site for a good dose of democratic socialism.
Cheers, I’ve had a wee look at Zero Hedge but I must look into it further. Haven’t heard of Wolff though, Ill check it out. Here’s a nice link I found the other day (which I haven’t explored yet):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joshua-m-brown/best-financial-journalists_b_1605584.html
I feel a bit safer talking about this weirdo banking stuff now that TFC is on a weeks ban 😉
I don’t get this, wtf is going on here – how can a company like mainzeal go down with all of the supposed building going or about to get going in chch. Although I spoke to a friend down there who said the pay is shit and he’s off to oz.
Contracts and buying power concentrate in Fletchers; then probably some management mistakes and wrong assumptions at Mainzeal.
We’ve created an economy of winners and losers, and money becoming more and more concentrated.
International problems. Christchurch operation will be worth a relatives fortune.
Purges, I shit them.
Just wrote this tonight. Here with the freaks and the snakes. “lol:
https://soundcloud.com/theal1en/getting-it-done
You say it’s all right, sometime, we’ll get it done.
Well sometimes you just suck and I’ve got the fight to say.
You should never grab at something you couldn’t take.
You say you’re all right, sometime, you’ll get it done.
And sometimes you just say I’ve got to learn to wait.
Well you should never hit on something you can’t break.
What you gonna wash away?
How you gonna wash me way?
For no better reason than I’ve got no reason to fake.
I got a reason I got the will and the way.
No helps coming, no one’s running away.
Firing treason, ‘here with the freaks and the snakes.
What you gonna wash away?
How you gonna wash me way?
You say he’s all right, sometime, he’ll get it done.
Well sometime is just words far too easy to say.
You should never try on something if you can’t even fake.
You say it’s all right, sometime, you’ll get it done.
And sometimes you just say I’ve got to learn to heal.
Well you should never count on something you can’t steal.
What you gonna wash away?
How you gonna wash me way?
For no better reason than I’ve got no reason to fade.
I got a meaning, I got the will and the way.
New hope running, no one’s staking stakes.
Firing reason, ‘here with the freaks and the snakes.
What you gonna wash away?
How you gonna wash me way?