John Key gives no sign yet of third-term blues (NZH)
I will explain to NZH why Key still rates so highly, despite Dirty Politics, Sabin, Flag Flop, denying Refugees, denying help for NZ’s vulnerable, Starving kids, Auckland Housing Crisis, Regions going down the plughole….
Claire Trevatt,
John Armstrong,
Mike Hosking,
Patrick Gower,
Duncan Garner (possibly more stupid than biased)
And JKs unassailable core voter base. .the aspirational bbq beer mate immovable low-information well-conned core vote. Nothing can shift the fanbois of the SunGodKeyreep in chief.
I suggest its bigger than that – the wealthy media baron/s who own the newspapers and airways are dictating the tune and “leading” the writers with their subject content – the writers/ radio talkback hosts etc obviously have no moral compass and do what they’re told or they lose their positions and fat paychecks – all round the situation is pretty hopeless – we need the old fashioned underground newspapers to reappear and to just stick to the internet for informed comment and news. The Herald is bleeding subscribers so there is hope out there people are waking up. The Listener is going the same way with its life style content – people will only take so much of this rubbish we are are offered before they turn off and cancel out out of it.
Right, well, let’s subject that Herald on Sunday analysis to a bit of critical scrutiny, shall we.
The Editorial suggests that “This Prime Minister is completing the first year of his third term more popular than any at the same stage in our lifetime…..Helen Clark (as Bryce Edwards notes)…..was on the back foot by this time.”
And
“Key is sailing through his seventh year of office…..still as popular as ever. He had 64% support in the latest Herald-DigiPoll survey and National was on 51%, remarkable by any historical comparison.”
So, there are four rather sweeping claims being made:
(1) National is still as popular as it has ever been since winning office in 2008
(2) National’s / the Government’s current support (a year out from their third Election win) is significantly higher than that enjoyed by any previous third term government at a similar point in New Zealand political history (“remarkable by any historical comparison / more popular than any at the same stage in our lifetime”).
(3) On 64% Preferred PM, Key is still as popular as he has ever been.
(4) Key (favoured by almost two-thirds of voters) is more popular than Helen Clark – and indeed any former PM – was at this stage in their third term.
Reality:
(1) First thing I’d say about taking a comparative approach to National’s current and previous support is you need to look at all the recent polls, not just the Herald-DigiPoll. The 5 polls taken in the last couple of months have the Nats on 43, 47, 47, 51, 51.
Compare these current figures with where they were a year on from their first victory in 2008 – 57, 52, 54, 58, 60
Since the 2008 Election, the Nats have received more than 51% support (ie more than their current apex) in a grand total of 92 opinion polls / they’ve taken 54% or more in 51 polls / and 56% or more in 23 polls.
So, I wouldn’t quite agree with the HoS that they’re as popular now as they’ve ever been. Looking at recent polls, I’d say the Nats aren’t too far away from where they were throughout most of 2012-2013. Which was a low point for them. Almost always in the 40s but, just now and then, making it to 51%.
(2) Because the Left/Oppo bloc vote (and poll support) is so dispersed between Labour, the Greens and NZF (unlike the Right/Govt bloc vote / poll support which coalesces tightly around National), we really need to compare current Government poll support…..with poll support for the Governing parties of the third term Clark Administration.
National Government support a year on from third election victory (polls of last couple of months):
45, 48, 48, 53, 52
Labour Government support a year on from third election victory:
57, 50, 51, 49, 55, 58
There were quite a number of polls over the final term of the Clark Government, incidentally, where the governing parties collectively scored above 50% in the polls, quite often over 52%, and (before mid 2007) occasionally above 54%.
(3) First thing to say about Key’s 64% rating being trumpeted by the HoS is that the Herald-DigiPolls greatly exaggerate PM/Party Leader ratings. That’s because – in stark contrast to the Colmar Brunton, Reid Research and Fairfax Ipsos polls…..the Herald-Digiexclude the always hefty number of Don’t Knows/None-of-the-Aboves.
Hence, Key is on 64% Preferred PM here but just 40% and 38% respectively in the latest Colmar Brunton and Reid Research polls.
So, we need to compare like with like….. while at the same time pointing out that 64% of poll respondents (and thus, by implication, voters) do NOT prefer Key as PM. More like 64% of the roughly 60-70% who chose one of the leaders. In other words, about 40% of all voters/respondents (as the 2 TV polls are currently suggesting).
So, yeah, according to the Herald-DigiPoll results, kind of. He’s clearly been lower – 58% 2010, 56% 2013, but he’s also been quite a bit higher 68-71%
So, in a word, “No”. Our esteemed Leader is by no means “as popular a he’s always been” according to the TV polls. Key’s average Preferred PM rating since 2014 Election:
is down 10 points on 2009, down 11 points on 2011 and down 4 points on last year.
His average over the last 3 polls is 39%, down 12, 13 and 6 points respectively.
On top of that, the detailed Reid Research ratings on a whole lot of diverse measurements surrounding leadership attributes reinforce this evidence of a slow but steady fall in popularity and esteem for the said Key.
(4) Key vs Clark popularity at this stage in third term.
Herald-DigiPoll
Key: 65, 65, 64
Clark: 52, 51, 54
So, yeah, true, but not exactly an overwhelming margin. Particularly, when you remember that the Herald-DigiPoll’s methodology exaggerates differences in support.
Colmar Brunton and Reid Research
Key: 39, 40, 38
Clark: 38, 38, (Reid Research)
(Haven’t got the exact Colmar Brunton stats for Clark in mid-late 06, but from a CB chart I can see that she was consistently rating between about 36-40% in CB polls at this point)
So, virtually no difference between Key and Clark a year on from their third election victories, according to the TV polls.
“So, virtually no difference between Key and Clark a year on from their third election victories, according to the TV polls.”
I think the biggest difference is there is no one in the current opposition that has captured the voters interest as Key did during Helen’s last term – which remains problematic if we want a change of government.
Once it became clear that he was going to mount a challenge to Brash (whose leadership, of course, was in a certain amount of turmoil following the extra-marital affair rumours), Key’s Preferred PM ratings rose from zero to 9%.
For the first few months after taking over as leader of the Opposition, he was in the mid-late 20s, then largely in the 30s through 2007 and (putting aside the Herald-DigiPolls), mid 30s-early 40s in election year 2008.
But, it’s possible to exaggerate (as journalists sometimes do) just how rare this is.
Helen Clark was certainly unpopular (especially in her early years as Labour Leader, when she often scored below 5% and was almost as disliked as Ruth Richardson). McClay of course suffered from similarly dire ratings, while Kirk and Bolger were by no means particularly popular Opposition leaders when it came to preferred PM (or Most Effective Leader as it tended to be in the late 60s / early 70s Polls).
On the other hand, Muldoon was more popular than Key in his early days as Opposition Leader. In fact, Muldoon was already topping the polls at the time of the 1969 Election (30% as most effective leader), which, of course, was well before he finally toppled Marshal in 1974.
In the 1992-1993 period, during the most draconian phase of a deeply reviled Bolger/Richardson government, Winston Peters was regularly scoring 20-30% as Preferred PM. By 1994, Peters’ bubble had burst and Jim Anderton began to eclipse everyone, always receiving in the 20-25% range (well ahead of Bolger, Moore and – by that stage – Peters). Anderton was also by far the most liked leader (by a majority of supporters of every single Party, yes even including National)
Not so sure about Lange – I’ll have to dig out the figures for 1983-1984. But, if memory serves me right, he was regularly in the 20s as Opposition Leader.
So various Party Leaders have, in Opposition, rivalled Key’s support – at least in terms of his ratings during the first year of his leadership.
(2) Notice that Kirk (who reached a highpoint of 17% as most effective leader in 1969, before falling to 7% in July 1972 and 9% just before that year’s election) and Clark (on horrendously low figures for a good deal of her stint as Oppo Leader) both went on to win Elections by a pretty comfortable margin.
This article gives a good explanation of the current state of TPP negotiations.
A few excerpts
“Carmageddon: Why the TPP probably won’t be an election issue
By Peter Clark | Sep 4, 2015 4:27 pm
“The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations remain mired in basic disagreements. Closure in 2015 is a fading dream abandoned by the realists.
Others, recognizing that their best bet is passage on Obama’s watch, continue to press for an early ministerial conference to avoid the legislative timetable slipping into 2016. But their views have little traction these days.
Post-Maui finger-pointing over the stumbling blocks is reaching epidemic proportions. Japanese TPP Minister Akira Amari claimed on his blog that U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman didn’t push hard enough for closure at Maui. This jab was aimed at New Zealand Trade Minister Tim Groser, who was inflexible and extortionate in his dairy demands.
I thought I would share this – perhaps it might put the flag referenda in “context” as well as adding some much needed humour!
I live overseas in the Middle East and yesterday I was discussing, briefly, the flag referenda with some of my Arab staff (just saying we were having a vote for one of 4 new flag designs and then having a 2nd vote with the winner against the current one). I showed them the 4 choices for the 1st referendum and one of them said (and I’m paraphrasing slightly):
“They are not really very good designs are they? The ones with a white feather are sort of OK – is it from that NZ bird? But why have you got a Black Hole on the other one?”
I had to try really hard not to fall down laughing! 🙂
We run a tourist retail business in Queenstown and have a Silver Fern for a logo. We spend a lot of time explaining the fern, “what’s with the feather, we see that everywhere?” Combined with a black background most of the world is completely confused as to what we stand for.
When flat whites started becoming served here baristas would put a silver fern design into the foam. Most are from the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India as well as some locals. None had any idea of what the design was and what the connection to NZ was.
And if I ask people what a Kiwi is they think it is a fruit (& with no idea of how the name came about). Even Indians & Pakistanis – rabid cricket fans as they are don’t really recognize the term “kiwi” and don’t recognize the fern.
It was a salutary lesson in the prominence and recognition of a small country a long way away in the South Pacific. 😉
Q – what will piss key off the most
A – not getting his own way
Q – what does key want
A – a flag legacy
Q – what will piss key off the most
A – not having a flag legacy
Q – what can I do
A – vote for the existing flag
The deeper rationale is – my flag is not included and can never be included until we have grown up as a nation. The alternative designs are substandard imo and the process for deciding them is shonkey and flawed – any flag debate should discuss values and history not just be corporate logo (TPPA) hunting. The current flag (for all its many and detailed faults) actually does mean something – it shows us who we are today and who we were yesterday and is a symbol of many things including the non-delivery from the Crown of its Treaty obligations. So, for all of the reasons above I am going to vote (at this stage) for the existing flag.
You can fool yourself MM but you can’t fool me! Not interested in a Union Jack on our flag. I find it fascinating that otherwise seemingly progressive folk are so attached to such a conservative symbol and one that explicitly represents our colonial history.
The reason you have stated is exactly my reason – until the country changes no need to try and hide the symbol of the unchanging, namely the flag that displays it all.
Fair enough, but what’s the point of removing the jack when the Crown is still a thing?
Is the latter you want to get rid of?
This idea that we are totally post colonial now seems blind, to me. We just run off to join a war as part of a club. No one could explain how it was actually going to help anything, we just had to join in to show our commitment to ‘the team’.
I don’t see the jack in the corner of our flag as a sign of subservience or anything, it’s just an accurate reference to the fact that NZ was colonised by the UK, and is still heavily influenced by that. Doesn’t mean we are a colony now, and we haven’t exactly put all that stuff to bed, so to me, getting rid of it now in order to show we have gotten over all that stuff would be putting the cart before the horse.
I can’t help but notice, too, that the Lockwood designs, to my eye at least, seem very pakeha, and I don;t think it’s a coincidence that they are popular. Reminds me of all the talk about “why can’t Waitangi day be more like Australia day?’ and all that jazz.
I can’t help but notice, too, that the Lockwood designs, to my eye at least, seem very pakeha, and I don;t think it’s a coincidence that they are popular.
And are thus going against the trend of greater Māori culture in our society. I doubt if that itself is a mistake as I’m sure that a number of older rich white guys are getting concerned about that shift in culture.
Until New Zealand can show the maturity and wisdom to vote out such a ghastly, incompetent, sly, uncaring government led by a selfish, divisive, untruthful, glee club wannabee, schoolboy/ query man who uses New Zealand as his very own playground and Parliament as his own playpen (think
announcing his ‘besties’ All Blacks wc team from there as one
example) I think you are totally on the button marty m.
jan.m.::
I like Hami Shearlie’s idea on comment red peak yesterday @11.37pm comment 53. (sorry can’t get this tablet to link)
“This month there will be a total lunar eclipse, visible from most of North America, South America, Europe, West Asia and parts of Africa (but not visible from NZ). In the Americas, the eclipse will begin on the evening of September 27.
This eclipse is the fourth and last in a tetrad, a series of four consecutive total lunar eclipses in 2014 – 2015.
The term Blood Moon has recently become popular when referring to the total lunar eclipses in the 2014 – 2015 lunar tetrad. While the term has no technical or astronomical basis, many people believe that it comes from the Bible, and that the occurrence of the lunar tetrad is a fulfillment of a biblical prophecy.”
If you google “Blood moon, tetrad, armageddon” or words to that effect on Youtube, you will find an astonishing number of links to predictions about the end of the world on or about Sept 27 2015.
I started watching one of American-Jewish origin, but was immediately put off by the overlaid “Request for a donation if you liked the video”. Seemed to me that the author shot himself in the foot right there. I couldn’t see how donating money to his cause would in any way help him if he actually believed in what he was predicting in his video (i.e. the end of the world later this month).
There have been prophecies that “the end is nigh” pretty much since the beginning of time, as I understand it. But so far, of course, they have all turned out to be cases of “when prophecy fails”. I don’t imagine that this batch, due for the acid test later this month, will be any different.
Nevertheless, if you add up all the viewings of these “prophecy videos” on You-tube, its a depressingly high number. All those people with nothing more important to think about, in a world where there is an urgent need for a complete re-think of what the governments of the world SHOULD be doing! A world that requires urgent action on issues like global climate change, issues like the need for an economic system that benefits all rather than just the 1%, and issues like what to do about the millions of people walking out of Africa and the Middle East in search of better governments; that is, governments that are supposedly in touch with the needs of the people.
Has this been covered here yet?
If not it deserves to be well read.
From interest.co.nz site
. Does migration really help the economy? – Michael Reddell over at Croaking Cassandra has been doing some excellent work digging into the numbers and arguments behind New Zealand’s surprisingly lax and high migration levels.
He has found that most of the migrants coming aren’t nearly as skilled as we might think and the economic value they add is not as high as we all assume.
That doesn’t actually surprise me as the fact of the matter is that it costs us to settle new people here. They need services and support that those native to NZ don’t need and if we don’t provide those services and support then it will cost us even more.
It’s like they look at the 19th century and the differences made by the new colonists with their far greater knowledge and expect it to continue despite that fact that new colonists today don’t have that same discrepancy in knowledge and many often have less knowledge than the people already here – the people being displaced.
costs us – right wing meme
native to nz??? – born here I think you mean
cost us even more – right wing meme
new colonists with their far greater knowledge – didn’t know how to survive here though those big brains
the same discrepancy of knowledge – utter rubbish
people being displaced – no one is being displaced, just another right wing meme
so wrong, so selfish, so bennettpulltheladderup, wtf is wrong with you?
new colonists with their far greater knowledge – didn’t know how to survive here though those big brains
1. They would have survived fine
2. They had the knowledge of industrial systems
the same discrepancy of knowledge – utter rubbish
You seem to have missed a couple of important words there – don’t have.
people being displaced – no one is being displaced
Of course people will be displaced. You can’t move people into a community without causing movement in the community.
wtf is wrong with you?
Nothing. It’s the people who refuse to accept the physical limits of the world that are wrong and causing extreme strife around the world through their stupidity.
draco, you’re the only one who brought up any sort of equivalence between bringing steel and industrialisation to 19C NZ, and refugees coming to NZ today (straw man, much?). But that doesn’t mean the refugees today have nothing to offer, or that we’ll be economically worse off for saving their lives.
As for your “displacement” argument, nobody is forced to relocate, and nobody is kicked out of NZ, so the immigrants will add to the knowledge here, not subtract.
BTW, 19C drowning rates alone tend to suggest that no, settlers didn’t “survive fine”. Google “the New Zealand Death”.
you’re the only one who brought up any sort of equivalence between bringing steel and industrialisation to 19C NZ, and refugees coming to NZ today (straw man, much?).
Actually, that was Bill bringing up the bullshit that refugees would be really good for us when the evidence shows that immigrants aren’t. I suggested above that people are still looking to the 19th century and the effects of bringing industrialisation to NZ but the equivalence no longer works because bringing people in no longer brings in skills and knowledge not here.
As for your “displacement” argument, nobody is forced to relocate, and nobody is kicked out of NZ, so the immigrants will add to the knowledge here, not subtract.
Fuck, are you really that stupid? The refugees or even immigrants will not bring any knowledge to NZ as we already have that knowledge and skill here. There are many forms of ‘displacement’. There’s going to be displacement from jobs, changes in social circles and other social effects. And there will be a decrease in availability of resources as noted in the article linked to.
Really, you should try reading these things some time. You never know, you might actually learn something and drop your preconceived, and wrong, notions.
I suggested above that people are still looking to the 19th century and the effects of bringing industrialisation to NZ
Yes, you did suggest that, and it’s a stupid suggestion.
The link “showed” that immigrants, including short term working holiday “immigrants”, aren’t as good for the economy “as we all assume”. There’s a fucking massive gulf between that and immigration being a net cost to the economy.
Do you seriously belive that we know everything that a refugee can offer? That someone coming from the other side of the planet will look at the same production or technical or farming problem and not come up with a different solution to what we already have, one that might actually be better?
Displacement from jobs? Bullshit, because the tories have an objective of 6-8% unemployment, a target they reliably hit every fucking time thei’ve been in government the last 30 years. When the unemployment level is the result of government policy targeting a specific rate rather than a fixed number of available jobs, increased population doesn’t affect the population rate and therefore only an idiot woud yell ‘they took rrr jerbs!’
The link “showed” that immigrants, including short term working holiday “immigrants”, aren’t as good for the economy “as we all assume”.
Actually, it showed that immigration always pushes prices up and causes a decrease in availability of resources in the short to medium term. As we don’t stop immigration that means we have a constant push on resources and prices. Now, the idiots will be saying great this is because it pushes growth but we really do need to stop growing and become sustainable.
That someone coming from the other side of the planet will look at the same production or technical or farming problem and not come up with a different solution to what we already have, one that might actually be better?
That’s a possibility but a very slim one and thus we’d probably be better off just importing the idea.
When the unemployment level is the result of government policy targeting a specific rate rather than a fixed number of available jobs, increased population doesn’t affect the population rate and therefore only an idiot woud yell ‘they took rrr jerbs!’
So to recap: a few thousand refugees will cost a huge amount of money to bring over here and they won’t have any new skills so will live off welfare thus increasing inflation while at the same time they fiendishly use their lack of new skills and poor integration to take our jobs no wait robots took rrr jerbs. Because 19C NZ settlers survived fine. Sounds legit. /sarc
Actually, it showed that immigration always pushes prices up and causes a decrease in availability of resources in the short to medium term.
“all else equal”. And we know how accurate economic predictions are when they reduce it to a single line function based on “all else equal”.
And even if this were the case, the answer is simple: we take in 10,000 refugees and make it harder for non-skilled holiday-making migrants to get work visas, by about 10,000 less needy migrants per year.
That’s a possibility but a very slim one and thus we’d probably be better off just importing the idea.
Well, sadly even if we knew there was a better way of approaching the problem, the person who would have had that idea suffocated in the back of a truck.
Immigration means diversity. Diversity means adaptability. Adaptability means success in the longer term. No, we shouldn’t have to make it an economic argument, but we do have to because money is the only thing some tories value.
Do you know what I’m looking forward to? Syrian takeaways. Can’t wait. No idea exactly what it will be, but I’ve never met a cuisine that didn’t have something delightful.
So to recap: a few thousand refugees will cost a huge amount of money to bring over here and they won’t have any new skills so will live off welfare thus increasing inflation while at the same time they fiendishly use their lack of new skills and poor integration to take our jobs no wait robots took rrr jerbs. Because 19C NZ settlers survived fine. Sounds legit. /sarc
That would be you proving your stupidity.
I said that they won’t bring new skills as they’ll have the same skills we already have.
All the rest is a similar misunderstanding of what I said. I can only assume this is a purposeful misunderstanding because you don’t want to face reality.
And even if this were the case, the answer is simple: we take in 10,000 refugees and make it harder for non-skilled holiday-making migrants to get work visas, by about 10,000 less needy migrants per year.
I’d be supportive of that idea but then I think we need a moratorium on immigration for about 5 years.
Immigration means diversity. Diversity means adaptability. Adaptability means success in the longer term.
That would be nice if that’s what it meant but it’s unlikely to do so due to them doing things the same way we already do. As I said, we won’t get any more knowledge.
Do you know what I’m looking forward to? Syrian takeaways.
Chances are it’s already here. That link doesn’t show any specific Syrian food places but does have Lebanese.
It’s part of the process of excusing a dick move: by conflating refugees with standard immigrants, it lessens the emotional tug of the refugees need. I’ve also seen in some comments on this issue the argument that the refugees who make it to Europe aren’t poor, because they’ve paid smugglers for their passage (never mind whether they spent all their money on the passage, or indebted themselves to snakeheads to end up living as slaves). Not ‘real’ refugees, more economic migrants, sort of thing.
That’s where the pictures of the dead come in. Nobody risks that for themselves or their children just for a change of scenery.
I said that they won’t bring new skills as they’ll have the same skills we already have.
No, they won’t have the same skills we already have. We do not know everything there is to know (even if you think that you do). They will bring new skills and new perspectives.
We don’t need a moratorium on migration, especially refugees. Swings and roundabouts – it wasn’t so long ago that net migration was in the negatives.
BTW, I suspect Lebanese food is as close to Syrian as Turkish food is. As in identical, but only if one has a dull palate and a head full of ignorance.
Well, rather than saying what we might think and what we all assume, the simple question is: are migrants a net cost or net benefit to the economy?
And if the answer is “net cost”, then the next question is: how much money are we prepared to save in order to feel ok about seeing photos of bodies on beaches?
Did you hear the nasty and crap comments that Matthew Hooton made about Labour and the Greens on the Q ans A programme this morning? He came across as a complete arsehole stating that Labour and the Greens are simply leveraging this refugee crisis and the dead child’s photo to increase their own poll ratings. Hooton is a dirty politics playing despicable bugger. He is a disgrace as an armchair talking head.
No-one bailed Hooton up for it which is of even more concern because both parties came out expressing the urgent need to take more refugees BEFORE the photo appeared in the media.
The only party playing politics is National who are going to do an about face tomorrow because they have found themselves on the wrong side of the ledger. Humanitarian reasons don’t come into it.
I think Hooten is partially right. There’s been far too much shallow hand-wringing and emotional blackmail over this for it all to be genuine.
Why has the plight of refugees only become a cause celebre when the wave hit Europe? The stories have been coming out of camps in Jordan & Lebanon for years and no-one gave a damn. Countless mothers have been forced to sell their underage daughters to rich predators flocking in from the gulf states, haven’t seen too many politicians clamouring to help those refugees. Countless tens of thousands of refugees have died on land while fleeing recent conflict in the ME. But they’re not on Europe’s doorstep, nobody cares.
I think this is Europe’s problem, let them sort it. We should be helping people in our own way and on our own terms, not being forced to adopt some fake moral conscience for something we had nothing to do with. We’re no longer a colonial outpost, we don’t need to fight in Europe’s wars or bow to their arrogance.
By all means increase the refugee quota but not because of this. It would be for all the wrong reasons.
because they are now not internally displaced wretched existences anymore, they are not wretched existences that upset some fatty holidaymakers in their vacations spots.
its actually quite simple, how dare these wretched existences disturb us in our wretched existence. Don’t they know we have problems too?
We should have increased the refugee quote the time we took in the refugees on the Tampa, it was a missed opportunity, but hey better late then never.
Also, we should get used to this, its just gonna get worse.
finally the media throws an evocative image of the awful plight of refugees into the discussion and that makes it somehow okay to criticise the response because the media is feeding some emotion into it
how can so many distant theorisers sit in their comfortable armchairs in nice safe countries and say that we’re getting all emotional and that’s not the right thing to direct our response
– that our distance makes it the EU’s problem not ours
– and that we are justified in doing nothing based on the attitude ‘look after our own first’
good grief
finally some sympathetic coverage from the media that’s making people around the world wake up to the wretched realities that the refugees from wars have been experiencing
this is something i thought that compassionate people at all ends of the political spectrum might be able to come together on
yep hooton is the classic political animal – changing his spots to appear more reasonable but within, a seething mass of hidden foulness, occasionally exhibited such as in this case about the refugee crisis.
Hoots and Slater are the same in that they demonstrate the principle that mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself. Neither are capable or compassion and both are fearful of facing the consequences of conscience, so they must imagine that others must be the same as themselves.
Slater’s more honest than Hoots (but not right) in saying openly that he feels that everyone is a foul-minded moral cripple like himself and both believe that everyone has motives no better than their own and they are therefore justified in their foulness.
They will even claim to be better than anyone else because they think they are not ‘hypocrites’ like people who profess moral values but are ‘realists’ who profess none.
Cynicism however is not intelligence and it is certainly not ‘realism’ when you bear in mind that politics is what we make it or allow it to be.
They are not only corrupt and revolting, they are corrupting – poison in the well of discourse.
What a load of sanctimonious simple minded crap. Same logic as lions are bad, lambs are good, on the basis lambs are cute peaceful herbivores, lions are dominant agrresive carnivores. simply labelling some one good or bad because they don’t fit your view of the world is dim witted at best This air of superiority by the hard left nut bars manifested in constant vilification of JK, dumb voters who just can’t see it, is why people just turn away from anything with the rancid smell of the left
I have one response to your ramblings. The epistemological meta-narrative that you seem to espouse is not compatible with a teleological account of the real world 😀 ( for Marty as he needs some humour)
Erdogan professes sympathy, but his government is pushing refugees to take the sea route rather than crossing the Bosphorus, creating a humanitarian crisis as further reason to intervene in Syria.
If Key wanted to defuse some of the negativity around his flag change process, he should change the law to add Red Peak as a 5th option for this referendum. He can say the public have spoken, he’s listened, and so he’s doing the pragmatic thing and adding it to the list.
It’ll come in 3rd behind the Lockwood designs, and everything will carry on as it always was going to.
Out-take:
Xerox had bug across wide range of scanners for several years before anyone found it
That bug switched characters and thus no document scanned by those scanners can be considered accurate
German government has now banned the use of that algorithm (Big2) across all manufacturers for scanning legal documents
Charter Schools- read this Davit Seymour, John Key!
In ‘Win for Public Schools,’ Washington Supreme Court Rules Charter Schools Unconstitutional
“The Supreme Court has affirmed what we’ve said all along—charter schools steal money from our existing classrooms, and voters have no say in how these charter schools spend taxpayer funding.”—Kim Mead, Washington Education Association ”
“The new ruling (pdf) states that charters, “devoid of local control from their inception to their daily operation,” cannot be classified as “common schools,” nor have “access to restricted common school funding.”
Ravitch writes that the 6-3 decision “is a big win for parents and public schools,” and that it “gives hope to parents all across America, who see charter schools draining funding from their public schools, favoring the privileges of the few over the rights of the many.”
Meanwhile the real issues away from the msm preoccupation with the jonkey PR flag change diversion and the stupid All Blacks …
This report dissects the looming financial crisis caused by the Western banksters….and billions of dollars fleeing out of China because of its consequent economic crisis …and propping up housing bubbles around the world..
( ..it has come to a place near you …the New Zealand and especially the Auckland housing crisis …and ..refutes those who accepted jonkey Nact framing and said this was a racism issue and castigated the NZLP for “crude racial profiling”..yes Greens )
“In this special episode of the Keiser Report from New York, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss the never seen before triple category four hurricanes heading for global financial markets caused by injection of too much hot air from central bankers. In the second half, Max interviews Gerald Celente about Rule 48, volatility and invasions.”
The coming total lunar eclipse on Sunday ( 27 – 28 September) has certain distinguishing features such as : (1). It is combining with supermoon ( pegree Moon ), (2) It is the fourth total lunar eclipse in series, (3). Energies being generated by planets such as Saturn, Mars, Jupiter and Rahu as carriers of these lunar eclipses in contemporary times are not as positive as human beings would have wished . The likely impact of the said phenomenon on earth and its inhabitants was explained by this Vedic astrology writer in article – “Total lunar eclipse of 28 September 2015 and the world”- published in June 2015 in Summer 2015 issue of The Astrologer’s Notebook , a quarterly publication in print from North Port, Florida. Readers may like to know that impacts of such celetial phenomena are not confined to the day these occur. The eclipse comes to 27 September in some parts of west. Some months before and after also, the impact remains. Already in contemporary times recently , these happenings have hit the headlines of newspapers : migrant refugee crisis in Europe, global economy slowdown, volcano eruptions, huge tragedy in holy shrine of Mecca , devastating 8.3 magnitude earthquake in Chile, massive fire in California and elsewhere, threats of war by different countries, burning Middle East, unprecedented happenings in Japan, China and Thailand , danger to food crops by drought, floods, inhospitable weather and storms . It looks as if there is widespread environment of uncertainty. Are these uncommon or unusual happenings not a sign of said phenomena on 27 September 2015 ? But if by these phenomenon, world coming to an end or total extinction of mankind is meant, this writer does not subscribe to that opinion or prediction. Mankind is undoubtedly passing through tougher , harder and critical times which may likely cause before mid – 2016 wider damage or harm but end time of mankind as feared by some is neither disclosed nor supported by planetary impacts mentioned here.
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 ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babu’s humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The 2022 election brought the “teal wave” into parliament. The next election will test whether teals, who occupy what were Liberal seats, and other independents can maintain their momentum. Joining us on the Podcast ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide Pixavri/Shutterstock A major Federal Court class action has been dismissed this week after Justice Michael Lee ruled there was not enough evidence to prove the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer. Plaintiff Kelvin ...
In The Week in Politics: politicians have to decide what to do about child abuse, Health NZ is booked in for major surgery and Darleen Tana returns. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman – specifically a woman of colour, Vice President Kamala ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Bennett, PhD Student, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University Last week, a drone delivery company called Wing (owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet) started operating in Melbourne. Some 250,000 residents in parts of the city’s eastern suburbs can now order food from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Foo, Lecturer, Physiotherapy, Monash University pikselstock/Shutterstock In the next 40 years in Australia, it’s predicted the number of Australians aged 65 and over will more than double, while the number of people aged 85 and over will more than triple. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Grant, Research Associate, Power Institute for Arts and Visual Culture, University of Sydney Jonas Åkerström’s 1790 work, Session of the Accademia dell’Arcadia on August 17 1788.Nationalmuseum/Cecilia Heisser Ever wondered whether you’d have a better chance at winning an Olympic gold ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Jones, Program Lead, Food Governance, George Institute for Global Health wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock On Thursday, Australian and New Zealand food ministers at state, federal and national levels met to thrash out what’s next for health star ratings on packaged foods. Now, after ...
The Abuse in Care report found many Pacific survivors lost their connections to their culture and language, resulting in trauma that has been carried from generation to generation. ...
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because it’s not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...
Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori invites the current government to work in partnership with them to develop a pathway forward, including the development of a parallel pathway and meaningful policy and strategy for Kura Kaupapa Māori ...
If you haven’t started watching yet, Tara Ward begs you to reconsider. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. In the world of New Zealand reality television, we have many gems in our crown. There’s the delicious second season of the Celebrity Treasure ...
A new poem by Fiona Kidman. The clothes of the dead I did not keep my mother’s furry red beret for long nor the stringy scarves that adorned the necks of my aunts, although I have kept tag ends of gold, the rings and trinkets they wore, the brooches no ...
The government’s announcement that it will re-open the foreshore and seabed controversy by changing the rules on recognising centuries-old Māori customary title for a third time goes against the rule of law and New Zealand values,” Mr Tipa says. ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $25) Roarrrr! Perkins’ brilliant, award-winning, Marian-Keyes anointed, darkly funny, long ...
The 2004 Act vested ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the Crown, extinguishing any Māori claims to ownership and causing widespread outrage and protests among Māori communities. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antje Deckert, Associate Professor (Criminology), Auckland University of Technology Getty Images Despite the connection between institutional harm and gang membership made clear in this week’s mammoth royal commission abuse-in care report, the government seems unlikely to soften its “get tough on ...
From Lewis Clareburt in the swimming to the start of the rowing – the first seven days of Paris 2024 promise to be big for New Zealand. There are few events that bring the country together quite like an Olympic Games. Nothing quite matches the excitement of getting up in ...
Groundbreaking local science just showed up in the most surprising of places: the season finale of The Kardashians. In the season five finale of The Kardashians last night, several members of the family gathered together in one of their signature empty, cream-coloured rooms to hear test results that had been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University The Middle East is on the brink of a possibly devastating regional war, with hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah reaching an extremely dangerous level. Washington has engaged in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Elizabeth Eades, Rheumatologist, Monash University Lupus is an inflammatory autoimmune illness, where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks itself. Lupus can affect virtually any part of the body, although it most commonly affects the skin, joints and kidneys. The symptoms ...
A law firm that specialises in working with survivors of abuse in State care is disappointed that the Government fails to recognise that its boot camps can be directly compared to previous boot camps from the 1990s and 2000s. ...
Dying is a natural part of life, like updating your Wof or seeing your hairdresser, but without the word-of-mouth recs that help guarantee a good service. What if we changed that? Dying Reviews received by The Spinoff have had the names of organisations redacted while Hospice NZ collects further data. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Mike Lewinski/Flickr, CC BY On any clear night, if you gaze skywards long enough, chances are you’ll see a meteor streaking through the sky. Some nights, however, are better than others. At ...
Despite having no bars or other designated spaces for lesbians, Auckland boasts a small but mighty lesbian museum. So how did it get here? The past 18 months has brought increasing hostility towards the queer community across Aotearoa. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s anti-trans rally in Tamaki Makaurau last March led to a ...
Poneke Antifascist Coalition has invited Wellingtonians to stand in solidarity with the Kanak people at 12pm today outside the French Embassy in Wellington. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Layton, Visiting Fellow, Strategic Studies, Griffith University Drones are the signature technology of the Ukraine war. A few miniature aircraft designs were used in the war’s early days, but an incredible array of drones have now evolved. There are different types, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Slee, Associate Professor, Clinical Academic Neurologist, Flinders University Francisco Gonzelez/Unsplash Migraine is many things, but one thing it’s not is “just a headache”. “Migraine” comes from the Greek word “hemicrania”, referring to the common experience of migraine being predominantly ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lee White, Senior Lecturer and Horizon Fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney Australia was slow to introduce minimum building standards for energy efficiency. The Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) only came into force in 2003. Older homes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Sherwood, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney The past century of human-induced warming has increased rainfall variability over 75% of the Earth’s land area – particularly over Australia, Europe and eastern North America, new research shows. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Heynen, Program Coordinator, Sustainable Energy, The University of Queensland A temporary stadium in the Champ-de-Mars, ParisEkaterina Pokrovsky/Shutterstock As Paris prepares to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the sustainability of the event is coming under scrutiny. The organisers have promoted ...
A night of karaoke and community in a pub that feels like a memory. You’d barely even notice it, unless you knew to look. Tucked away behind a liquor store on busy Constable Street is the capital’s last great pub. Newtown Sports Bar is an emblem of the pub culture ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Wright, Professor in Marine Geology, University of Canterbury Louise Corcoran/Getty Images The decline in the number of doctoral candidates at New Zealand universities is a worrying sign for the country’s effort to build a knowledge-based economy. Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laurie Berg, Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney defotoberg/Shutterstock Migrant worker exploitation is entrenched in workplaces across Australia. Tragically, a deep fear of immigration consequences means most unlawful employer conduct goes unreported. On Wednesday, however, the government officially launched a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vaughan Cruickshank, Senior Lecturer in Health and Physical Education, University of Tasmania Paris is about to host its third summer Olympics. While we don’t yet know what the legacy of this year’s games will be, let’s take the opportunity to reflect on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Breakey, Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, Griffith University In the wake of the assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump, there were calls from bothsides of US politics, as well as internationally, to reduce the brutal, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keith Rathbone, Senior Lecturer, Modern European History and Sports History, Macquarie University Two high-profile assaults on Australians in Paris have raised concerns about security ahead of the Olympic Games. On Saturday evening, a young woman was allegedly sexually assaulted by a ...
Dying is inevitable and, so it seems, is it costing a lot, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in today’s extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.The cost of dying ...
The government took Joyce Harris's first baby and sent her off to a girls' home. Half a century on - and out of oceans of hurt - it asked her to be a mother figure. ...
It’s the deadliest fictional town in the country, but which death has been the most bonkers? Alex Casey looks back at 10 seasons of The Brokenwood Mysteries to find out. Warning: The following ranking story contains famous New Zealand actors appearing to be dead (not alive). The Spinoff has been ...
Water cremation is the biggest thing to happen to the death industry in the last 100 years. Alex Casey meets the people trying to bring it to Aotearoa. Through a set of mirrored doors down the industrial end of Christchurch’s St Asaph Street, death is getting a new lease on ...
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11508551
John Key gives no sign yet of third-term blues (NZH)
I will explain to NZH why Key still rates so highly, despite Dirty Politics, Sabin, Flag Flop, denying Refugees, denying help for NZ’s vulnerable, Starving kids, Auckland Housing Crisis, Regions going down the plughole….
Claire Trevatt,
John Armstrong,
Mike Hosking,
Patrick Gower,
Duncan Garner (possibly more stupid than biased)
Media not holding POWER to account.
As someone said on Twitter they were not aware that the Herald was allowing Mike Hosking to write editorials …
They do look like they were penned by Hosking. Either that or My 4 year old has a hobby I don’t know about.
And JKs unassailable core voter base. .the aspirational bbq beer mate immovable low-information well-conned core vote. Nothing can shift the fanbois of the SunGodKeyreep in chief.
I suggest its bigger than that – the wealthy media baron/s who own the newspapers and airways are dictating the tune and “leading” the writers with their subject content – the writers/ radio talkback hosts etc obviously have no moral compass and do what they’re told or they lose their positions and fat paychecks – all round the situation is pretty hopeless – we need the old fashioned underground newspapers to reappear and to just stick to the internet for informed comment and news. The Herald is bleeding subscribers so there is hope out there people are waking up. The Listener is going the same way with its life style content – people will only take so much of this rubbish we are are offered before they turn off and cancel out out of it.
Can’t disagree at all Saarbo!
Right, well, let’s subject that Herald on Sunday analysis to a bit of critical scrutiny, shall we.
The Editorial suggests that “This Prime Minister is completing the first year of his third term more popular than any at the same stage in our lifetime…..Helen Clark (as Bryce Edwards notes)…..was on the back foot by this time.”
And
“Key is sailing through his seventh year of office…..still as popular as ever. He had 64% support in the latest Herald-DigiPoll survey and National was on 51%, remarkable by any historical comparison.”
So, there are four rather sweeping claims being made:
(1) National is still as popular as it has ever been since winning office in 2008
(2) National’s / the Government’s current support (a year out from their third Election win) is significantly higher than that enjoyed by any previous third term government at a similar point in New Zealand political history (“remarkable by any historical comparison / more popular than any at the same stage in our lifetime”).
(3) On 64% Preferred PM, Key is still as popular as he has ever been.
(4) Key (favoured by almost two-thirds of voters) is more popular than Helen Clark – and indeed any former PM – was at this stage in their third term.
Reality:
(1) First thing I’d say about taking a comparative approach to National’s current and previous support is you need to look at all the recent polls, not just the Herald-DigiPoll. The 5 polls taken in the last couple of months have the Nats on 43, 47, 47, 51, 51.
Compare these current figures with where they were a year on from their first victory in 2008 – 57, 52, 54, 58, 60
Since the 2008 Election, the Nats have received more than 51% support (ie more than their current apex) in a grand total of 92 opinion polls / they’ve taken 54% or more in 51 polls / and 56% or more in 23 polls.
So, I wouldn’t quite agree with the HoS that they’re as popular now as they’ve ever been. Looking at recent polls, I’d say the Nats aren’t too far away from where they were throughout most of 2012-2013. Which was a low point for them. Almost always in the 40s but, just now and then, making it to 51%.
(2) Because the Left/Oppo bloc vote (and poll support) is so dispersed between Labour, the Greens and NZF (unlike the Right/Govt bloc vote / poll support which coalesces tightly around National), we really need to compare current Government poll support…..with poll support for the Governing parties of the third term Clark Administration.
National Government support a year on from third election victory (polls of last couple of months):
45, 48, 48, 53, 52
Labour Government support a year on from third election victory:
57, 50, 51, 49, 55, 58
There were quite a number of polls over the final term of the Clark Government, incidentally, where the governing parties collectively scored above 50% in the polls, quite often over 52%, and (before mid 2007) occasionally above 54%.
(3) First thing to say about Key’s 64% rating being trumpeted by the HoS is that the Herald-DigiPolls greatly exaggerate PM/Party Leader ratings. That’s because – in stark contrast to the Colmar Brunton, Reid Research and Fairfax Ipsos polls…..the Herald-Digi exclude the always hefty number of Don’t Knows/None-of-the-Aboves.
Hence, Key is on 64% Preferred PM here but just 40% and 38% respectively in the latest Colmar Brunton and Reid Research polls.
So, we need to compare like with like….. while at the same time pointing out that 64% of poll respondents (and thus, by implication, voters) do NOT prefer Key as PM. More like 64% of the roughly 60-70% who chose one of the leaders. In other words, about 40% of all voters/respondents (as the 2 TV polls are currently suggesting).
Is Key, then, as popular as he’s ever been ?
Herald-DigiPoll (Preferred PM)
Since 14 election:…..65, 65, 64
2014:….. 67, 66, 66, 68, 62
2013:….. 63, 65, 56, 62,
2012:….. 64, 64, 66,
2011:….. 68, 70, 71
2010:…..58
So, yeah, according to the Herald-DigiPoll results, kind of. He’s clearly been lower – 58% 2010, 56% 2013, but he’s also been quite a bit higher 68-71%
What about the TV polls ?
Colmar Brunton and Reid Research
Since 14 election….. 44, 41, 42, 44, 39, 40, 38 (range: 38-44, average: 41% )
2014:….. range: 39-48, average: 45%
2013:….. range: 41-45, average: 43%
2012:….. range: 37-48, average: 43%
2011:….. range: 48-57, average: 52%
2010:….. range: 45-52, average: 48%
2009:….. range: 50-54, average: 51%
So, in a word, “No”. Our esteemed Leader is by no means “as popular a he’s always been” according to the TV polls. Key’s average Preferred PM rating since 2014 Election:
is down 10 points on 2009, down 11 points on 2011 and down 4 points on last year.
His average over the last 3 polls is 39%, down 12, 13 and 6 points respectively.
On top of that, the detailed Reid Research ratings on a whole lot of diverse measurements surrounding leadership attributes reinforce this evidence of a slow but steady fall in popularity and esteem for the said Key.
(4) Key vs Clark popularity at this stage in third term.
Herald-DigiPoll
Key: 65, 65, 64
Clark: 52, 51, 54
So, yeah, true, but not exactly an overwhelming margin. Particularly, when you remember that the Herald-DigiPoll’s methodology exaggerates differences in support.
Colmar Brunton and Reid Research
Key: 39, 40, 38
Clark: 38, 38, (Reid Research)
(Haven’t got the exact Colmar Brunton stats for Clark in mid-late 06, but from a CB chart I can see that she was consistently rating between about 36-40% in CB polls at this point)
So, virtually no difference between Key and Clark a year on from their third election victories, according to the TV polls.
Well done Mr Swordfish. A lot of careful Research. Thanks.
“So, virtually no difference between Key and Clark a year on from their third election victories, according to the TV polls.”
I think the biggest difference is there is no one in the current opposition that has captured the voters interest as Key did during Helen’s last term – which remains problematic if we want a change of government.
Two things:
(1) Yeah, Key was something of a phenomenon
Once it became clear that he was going to mount a challenge to Brash (whose leadership, of course, was in a certain amount of turmoil following the extra-marital affair rumours), Key’s Preferred PM ratings rose from zero to 9%.
For the first few months after taking over as leader of the Opposition, he was in the mid-late 20s, then largely in the 30s through 2007 and (putting aside the Herald-DigiPolls), mid 30s-early 40s in election year 2008.
But, it’s possible to exaggerate (as journalists sometimes do) just how rare this is.
Helen Clark was certainly unpopular (especially in her early years as Labour Leader, when she often scored below 5% and was almost as disliked as Ruth Richardson). McClay of course suffered from similarly dire ratings, while Kirk and Bolger were by no means particularly popular Opposition leaders when it came to preferred PM (or Most Effective Leader as it tended to be in the late 60s / early 70s Polls).
On the other hand, Muldoon was more popular than Key in his early days as Opposition Leader. In fact, Muldoon was already topping the polls at the time of the 1969 Election (30% as most effective leader), which, of course, was well before he finally toppled Marshal in 1974.
In the 1992-1993 period, during the most draconian phase of a deeply reviled Bolger/Richardson government, Winston Peters was regularly scoring 20-30% as Preferred PM. By 1994, Peters’ bubble had burst and Jim Anderton began to eclipse everyone, always receiving in the 20-25% range (well ahead of Bolger, Moore and – by that stage – Peters). Anderton was also by far the most liked leader (by a majority of supporters of every single Party, yes even including National)
Not so sure about Lange – I’ll have to dig out the figures for 1983-1984. But, if memory serves me right, he was regularly in the 20s as Opposition Leader.
So various Party Leaders have, in Opposition, rivalled Key’s support – at least in terms of his ratings during the first year of his leadership.
(2) Notice that Kirk (who reached a highpoint of 17% as most effective leader in 1969, before falling to 7% in July 1972 and 9% just before that year’s election) and Clark (on horrendously low figures for a good deal of her stint as Oppo Leader) both went on to win Elections by a pretty comfortable margin.
This article gives a good explanation of the current state of TPP negotiations.
A few excerpts
“Carmageddon: Why the TPP probably won’t be an election issue
By Peter Clark | Sep 4, 2015 4:27 pm
“The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations remain mired in basic disagreements. Closure in 2015 is a fading dream abandoned by the realists.
Others, recognizing that their best bet is passage on Obama’s watch, continue to press for an early ministerial conference to avoid the legislative timetable slipping into 2016. But their views have little traction these days.
Post-Maui finger-pointing over the stumbling blocks is reaching epidemic proportions. Japanese TPP Minister Akira Amari claimed on his blog that U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman didn’t push hard enough for closure at Maui. This jab was aimed at New Zealand Trade Minister Tim Groser, who was inflexible and extortionate in his dairy demands.
There were bilateral discussions on the fringes of the ASEAN ministerial meeting in Kuala Lumpur. There were no major breakthroughs.
https://ipolitics.ca/2015/09/04/carmageddon-why-the-tpp-probably-wont-be-an-election-issue/
Here’s hoping…
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canadians-want-a-new-pm-poll-suggests/article26230989/?click=sf_globefb
I thought I would share this – perhaps it might put the flag referenda in “context” as well as adding some much needed humour!
I live overseas in the Middle East and yesterday I was discussing, briefly, the flag referenda with some of my Arab staff (just saying we were having a vote for one of 4 new flag designs and then having a 2nd vote with the winner against the current one). I showed them the 4 choices for the 1st referendum and one of them said (and I’m paraphrasing slightly):
“They are not really very good designs are they? The ones with a white feather are sort of OK – is it from that NZ bird? But why have you got a Black Hole on the other one?”
I had to try really hard not to fall down laughing! 🙂
hahaha – can I copy that?
Yeah if you like.
We run a tourist retail business in Queenstown and have a Silver Fern for a logo. We spend a lot of time explaining the fern, “what’s with the feather, we see that everywhere?” Combined with a black background most of the world is completely confused as to what we stand for.
When flat whites started becoming served here baristas would put a silver fern design into the foam. Most are from the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India as well as some locals. None had any idea of what the design was and what the connection to NZ was.
And if I ask people what a Kiwi is they think it is a fruit (& with no idea of how the name came about). Even Indians & Pakistanis – rabid cricket fans as they are don’t really recognize the term “kiwi” and don’t recognize the fern.
It was a salutary lesson in the prominence and recognition of a small country a long way away in the South Pacific. 😉
re flag stuff
Q – what will piss key off the most
A – not getting his own way
Q – what does key want
A – a flag legacy
Q – what will piss key off the most
A – not having a flag legacy
Q – what can I do
A – vote for the existing flag
The deeper rationale is – my flag is not included and can never be included until we have grown up as a nation. The alternative designs are substandard imo and the process for deciding them is shonkey and flawed – any flag debate should discuss values and history not just be corporate logo (TPPA) hunting. The current flag (for all its many and detailed faults) actually does mean something – it shows us who we are today and who we were yesterday and is a symbol of many things including the non-delivery from the Crown of its Treaty obligations. So, for all of the reasons above I am going to vote (at this stage) for the existing flag.
You can fool yourself MM but you can’t fool me! Not interested in a Union Jack on our flag. I find it fascinating that otherwise seemingly progressive folk are so attached to such a conservative symbol and one that explicitly represents our colonial history.
The reason you have stated is exactly my reason – until the country changes no need to try and hide the symbol of the unchanging, namely the flag that displays it all.
Ok I get the logic. I just want the Union Jack removed now, not in a decade or three!
Fair enough, but what’s the point of removing the jack when the Crown is still a thing?
Is the latter you want to get rid of?
This idea that we are totally post colonial now seems blind, to me. We just run off to join a war as part of a club. No one could explain how it was actually going to help anything, we just had to join in to show our commitment to ‘the team’.
I don’t see the jack in the corner of our flag as a sign of subservience or anything, it’s just an accurate reference to the fact that NZ was colonised by the UK, and is still heavily influenced by that. Doesn’t mean we are a colony now, and we haven’t exactly put all that stuff to bed, so to me, getting rid of it now in order to show we have gotten over all that stuff would be putting the cart before the horse.
I can’t help but notice, too, that the Lockwood designs, to my eye at least, seem very pakeha, and I don;t think it’s a coincidence that they are popular. Reminds me of all the talk about “why can’t Waitangi day be more like Australia day?’ and all that jazz.
And are thus going against the trend of greater Māori culture in our society. I doubt if that itself is a mistake as I’m sure that a number of older rich white guys are getting concerned about that shift in culture.
Agree marty@8.10am
Until New Zealand can show the maturity and wisdom to vote out such a ghastly, incompetent, sly, uncaring government led by a selfish, divisive, untruthful, glee club wannabee, schoolboy/ query man who uses New Zealand as his very own playground and Parliament as his own playpen (think
announcing his ‘besties’ All Blacks wc team from there as one
example) I think you are totally on the button marty m.
jan.m.::
I like Hami Shearlie’s idea on comment red peak yesterday @11.37pm comment 53. (sorry can’t get this tablet to link)
New topic;
“This month there will be a total lunar eclipse, visible from most of North America, South America, Europe, West Asia and parts of Africa (but not visible from NZ). In the Americas, the eclipse will begin on the evening of September 27.
This eclipse is the fourth and last in a tetrad, a series of four consecutive total lunar eclipses in 2014 – 2015.
The term Blood Moon has recently become popular when referring to the total lunar eclipses in the 2014 – 2015 lunar tetrad. While the term has no technical or astronomical basis, many people believe that it comes from the Bible, and that the occurrence of the lunar tetrad is a fulfillment of a biblical prophecy.”
http://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/lunar/2015-september-28
If you google “Blood moon, tetrad, armageddon” or words to that effect on Youtube, you will find an astonishing number of links to predictions about the end of the world on or about Sept 27 2015.
I started watching one of American-Jewish origin, but was immediately put off by the overlaid “Request for a donation if you liked the video”. Seemed to me that the author shot himself in the foot right there. I couldn’t see how donating money to his cause would in any way help him if he actually believed in what he was predicting in his video (i.e. the end of the world later this month).
There have been prophecies that “the end is nigh” pretty much since the beginning of time, as I understand it. But so far, of course, they have all turned out to be cases of “when prophecy fails”. I don’t imagine that this batch, due for the acid test later this month, will be any different.
Nevertheless, if you add up all the viewings of these “prophecy videos” on You-tube, its a depressingly high number. All those people with nothing more important to think about, in a world where there is an urgent need for a complete re-think of what the governments of the world SHOULD be doing! A world that requires urgent action on issues like global climate change, issues like the need for an economic system that benefits all rather than just the 1%, and issues like what to do about the millions of people walking out of Africa and the Middle East in search of better governments; that is, governments that are supposedly in touch with the needs of the people.
There seems to be some irony in that.
I suspect that there are many theories about the end-times because in the past there have in fact been a huge number of actual end-times…
do you think this wont happen again?
Has this been covered here yet?
If not it deserves to be well read.
From interest.co.nz site
. Does migration really help the economy? – Michael Reddell over at Croaking Cassandra has been doing some excellent work digging into the numbers and arguments behind New Zealand’s surprisingly lax and high migration levels.
He has found that most of the migrants coming aren’t nearly as skilled as we might think and the economic value they add is not as high as we all assume.
http://croakingcassandra.com/2015/09/04/immigration-a-critical-economic-enabler-or-a-deeply-troubled-programme/
That doesn’t actually surprise me as the fact of the matter is that it costs us to settle new people here. They need services and support that those native to NZ don’t need and if we don’t provide those services and support then it will cost us even more.
It’s like they look at the 19th century and the differences made by the new colonists with their far greater knowledge and expect it to continue despite that fact that new colonists today don’t have that same discrepancy in knowledge and many often have less knowledge than the people already here – the people being displaced.
wtf
costs us – right wing meme
native to nz??? – born here I think you mean
cost us even more – right wing meme
new colonists with their far greater knowledge – didn’t know how to survive here though those big brains
the same discrepancy of knowledge – utter rubbish
people being displaced – no one is being displaced, just another right wing meme
so wrong, so selfish, so bennettpulltheladderup, wtf is wrong with you?
Simple physics actually.
1. They would have survived fine
2. They had the knowledge of industrial systems
You seem to have missed a couple of important words there – don’t have.
Of course people will be displaced. You can’t move people into a community without causing movement in the community.
Nothing. It’s the people who refuse to accept the physical limits of the world that are wrong and causing extreme strife around the world through their stupidity.
draco, you’re the only one who brought up any sort of equivalence between bringing steel and industrialisation to 19C NZ, and refugees coming to NZ today (straw man, much?). But that doesn’t mean the refugees today have nothing to offer, or that we’ll be economically worse off for saving their lives.
As for your “displacement” argument, nobody is forced to relocate, and nobody is kicked out of NZ, so the immigrants will add to the knowledge here, not subtract.
BTW, 19C drowning rates alone tend to suggest that no, settlers didn’t “survive fine”. Google “the New Zealand Death”.
Actually, that was Bill bringing up the bullshit that refugees would be really good for us when the evidence shows that immigrants aren’t. I suggested above that people are still looking to the 19th century and the effects of bringing industrialisation to NZ but the equivalence no longer works because bringing people in no longer brings in skills and knowledge not here.
Fuck, are you really that stupid? The refugees or even immigrants will not bring any knowledge to NZ as we already have that knowledge and skill here. There are many forms of ‘displacement’. There’s going to be displacement from jobs, changes in social circles and other social effects. And there will be a decrease in availability of resources as noted in the article linked to.
Really, you should try reading these things some time. You never know, you might actually learn something and drop your preconceived, and wrong, notions.
Yes, you did suggest that, and it’s a stupid suggestion.
The link “showed” that immigrants, including short term working holiday “immigrants”, aren’t as good for the economy “as we all assume”. There’s a fucking massive gulf between that and immigration being a net cost to the economy.
Do you seriously belive that we know everything that a refugee can offer? That someone coming from the other side of the planet will look at the same production or technical or farming problem and not come up with a different solution to what we already have, one that might actually be better?
Displacement from jobs? Bullshit, because the tories have an objective of 6-8% unemployment, a target they reliably hit every fucking time thei’ve been in government the last 30 years. When the unemployment level is the result of government policy targeting a specific rate rather than a fixed number of available jobs, increased population doesn’t affect the population rate and therefore only an idiot woud yell ‘they took rrr jerbs!’
Actually, it showed that immigration always pushes prices up and causes a decrease in availability of resources in the short to medium term. As we don’t stop immigration that means we have a constant push on resources and prices. Now, the idiots will be saying great this is because it pushes growth but we really do need to stop growing and become sustainable.
That’s a possibility but a very slim one and thus we’d probably be better off just importing the idea.
The RWNJs do, as a matter of fact, do that but that doesn’t preclude technological joblessness.
My main point here was that we shouldn’t be using economic reasons to justify immigration or taking in refugees as it’s really not economic.
So to recap: a few thousand refugees will cost a huge amount of money to bring over here and they won’t have any new skills so will live off welfare thus increasing inflation while at the same time they fiendishly use their lack of new skills and poor integration to take our jobs no wait robots took rrr jerbs. Because 19C NZ settlers survived fine. Sounds legit. /sarc
“all else equal”. And we know how accurate economic predictions are when they reduce it to a single line function based on “all else equal”.
And even if this were the case, the answer is simple: we take in 10,000 refugees and make it harder for non-skilled holiday-making migrants to get work visas, by about 10,000 less needy migrants per year.
Well, sadly even if we knew there was a better way of approaching the problem, the person who would have had that idea suffocated in the back of a truck.
Immigration means diversity. Diversity means adaptability. Adaptability means success in the longer term. No, we shouldn’t have to make it an economic argument, but we do have to because money is the only thing some tories value.
Do you know what I’m looking forward to? Syrian takeaways. Can’t wait. No idea exactly what it will be, but I’ve never met a cuisine that didn’t have something delightful.
I really wish people would stop conflating refugees and immigration in this way.
That would be you proving your stupidity.
I said that they won’t bring new skills as they’ll have the same skills we already have.
All the rest is a similar misunderstanding of what I said. I can only assume this is a purposeful misunderstanding because you don’t want to face reality.
I’d be supportive of that idea but then I think we need a moratorium on immigration for about 5 years.
That would be nice if that’s what it meant but it’s unlikely to do so due to them doing things the same way we already do. As I said, we won’t get any more knowledge.
Chances are it’s already here. That link doesn’t show any specific Syrian food places but does have Lebanese.
It’s part of the process of excusing a dick move: by conflating refugees with standard immigrants, it lessens the emotional tug of the refugees need. I’ve also seen in some comments on this issue the argument that the refugees who make it to Europe aren’t poor, because they’ve paid smugglers for their passage (never mind whether they spent all their money on the passage, or indebted themselves to snakeheads to end up living as slaves). Not ‘real’ refugees, more economic migrants, sort of thing.
That’s where the pictures of the dead come in. Nobody risks that for themselves or their children just for a change of scenery.
No, they won’t have the same skills we already have. We do not know everything there is to know (even if you think that you do). They will bring new skills and new perspectives.
We don’t need a moratorium on migration, especially refugees. Swings and roundabouts – it wasn’t so long ago that net migration was in the negatives.
BTW, I suspect Lebanese food is as close to Syrian as Turkish food is. As in identical, but only if one has a dull palate and a head full of ignorance.
Well, rather than saying what we might think and what we all assume, the simple question is: are migrants a net cost or net benefit to the economy?
And if the answer is “net cost”, then the next question is: how much money are we prepared to save in order to feel ok about seeing photos of bodies on beaches?
Did you hear the nasty and crap comments that Matthew Hooton made about Labour and the Greens on the Q ans A programme this morning? He came across as a complete arsehole stating that Labour and the Greens are simply leveraging this refugee crisis and the dead child’s photo to increase their own poll ratings. Hooton is a dirty politics playing despicable bugger. He is a disgrace as an armchair talking head.
So what will Hooten say when the Nats accept more refugees.
That is interesting at another level too. It means that Hooten accepts that NZers want more refugees to be accepted.
No-one bailed Hooton up for it which is of even more concern because both parties came out expressing the urgent need to take more refugees BEFORE the photo appeared in the media.
The only party playing politics is National who are going to do an about face tomorrow because they have found themselves on the wrong side of the ledger. Humanitarian reasons don’t come into it.
I think Hooten is partially right. There’s been far too much shallow hand-wringing and emotional blackmail over this for it all to be genuine.
Why has the plight of refugees only become a cause celebre when the wave hit Europe? The stories have been coming out of camps in Jordan & Lebanon for years and no-one gave a damn. Countless mothers have been forced to sell their underage daughters to rich predators flocking in from the gulf states, haven’t seen too many politicians clamouring to help those refugees. Countless tens of thousands of refugees have died on land while fleeing recent conflict in the ME. But they’re not on Europe’s doorstep, nobody cares.
I think this is Europe’s problem, let them sort it. We should be helping people in our own way and on our own terms, not being forced to adopt some fake moral conscience for something we had nothing to do with. We’re no longer a colonial outpost, we don’t need to fight in Europe’s wars or bow to their arrogance.
By all means increase the refugee quota but not because of this. It would be for all the wrong reasons.
because they are now not internally displaced wretched existences anymore, they are not wretched existences that upset some fatty holidaymakers in their vacations spots.
its actually quite simple, how dare these wretched existences disturb us in our wretched existence. Don’t they know we have problems too?
We should have increased the refugee quote the time we took in the refugees on the Tampa, it was a missed opportunity, but hey better late then never.
Also, we should get used to this, its just gonna get worse.
QFT
no no no
finally the media throws an evocative image of the awful plight of refugees into the discussion and that makes it somehow okay to criticise the response because the media is feeding some emotion into it
how can so many distant theorisers sit in their comfortable armchairs in nice safe countries and say that we’re getting all emotional and that’s not the right thing to direct our response
– that our distance makes it the EU’s problem not ours
– and that we are justified in doing nothing based on the attitude ‘look after our own first’
good grief
finally some sympathetic coverage from the media that’s making people around the world wake up to the wretched realities that the refugees from wars have been experiencing
this is something i thought that compassionate people at all ends of the political spectrum might be able to come together on
yep hooton is the classic political animal – changing his spots to appear more reasonable but within, a seething mass of hidden foulness, occasionally exhibited such as in this case about the refugee crisis.
Hoots and Slater are the same in that they demonstrate the principle that mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself. Neither are capable or compassion and both are fearful of facing the consequences of conscience, so they must imagine that others must be the same as themselves.
Slater’s more honest than Hoots (but not right) in saying openly that he feels that everyone is a foul-minded moral cripple like himself and both believe that everyone has motives no better than their own and they are therefore justified in their foulness.
They will even claim to be better than anyone else because they think they are not ‘hypocrites’ like people who profess moral values but are ‘realists’ who profess none.
Cynicism however is not intelligence and it is certainly not ‘realism’ when you bear in mind that politics is what we make it or allow it to be.
They are not only corrupt and revolting, they are corrupting – poison in the well of discourse.
What a load of sanctimonious simple minded crap. Same logic as lions are bad, lambs are good, on the basis lambs are cute peaceful herbivores, lions are dominant agrresive carnivores. simply labelling some one good or bad because they don’t fit your view of the world is dim witted at best This air of superiority by the hard left nut bars manifested in constant vilification of JK, dumb voters who just can’t see it, is why people just turn away from anything with the rancid smell of the left
mate there are good lions and bad ones – fuck haven’t you watched the lion king – get an education fool
From man who gets his knowledge from cartoons
Go figure?
lol – I love the smell of a nonsenseofhumour in the afternoon…
QED (Thus it is demonstrated). The fury of the mediocre soul that brands morality as hypocrisy to justify its mediocrity.
I have one response to your ramblings. The epistemological meta-narrative that you seem to espouse is not compatible with a teleological account of the real world 😀 ( for Marty as he needs some humour)
i thought rhinocrates put it rather well
a clear explanation of his observations about people who are steeped in dirty politics
mind you… i don’t agree that they are mediocre at what they do….. they are quite effective at derailing, framing and manipulating
in my view not ‘bad lions’ more like hyenas
Erdogan professes sympathy, but his government is pushing refugees to take the sea route rather than crossing the Bosphorus, creating a humanitarian crisis as further reason to intervene in Syria.
If Key wanted to defuse some of the negativity around his flag change process, he should change the law to add Red Peak as a 5th option for this referendum. He can say the public have spoken, he’s listened, and so he’s doing the pragmatic thing and adding it to the list.
It’ll come in 3rd behind the Lockwood designs, and everything will carry on as it always was going to.
He should then also include the current flag. and be done with it. The resene swatches should include some green, to represent the Dairy farmers.
Who’s this lockjaw fellow?
Now I’m a bit loath to link to a shop. But I want you to scroll down this link a read what is said in the last blue frame on the page.
Very cool from Mr Sanders, very cool indeed.
https://store.berniesanders.com/
David Kriesel: Lies, damned lies and scans (Hour long video)
Out-take:
Xerox had bug across wide range of scanners for several years before anyone found it
That bug switched characters and thus no document scanned by those scanners can be considered accurate
German government has now banned the use of that algorithm (Big2) across all manufacturers for scanning legal documents
Charter Schools- read this Davit Seymour, John Key!
In ‘Win for Public Schools,’ Washington Supreme Court Rules Charter Schools Unconstitutional
“The Supreme Court has affirmed what we’ve said all along—charter schools steal money from our existing classrooms, and voters have no say in how these charter schools spend taxpayer funding.”—Kim Mead, Washington Education Association ”
“The new ruling (pdf) states that charters, “devoid of local control from their inception to their daily operation,” cannot be classified as “common schools,” nor have “access to restricted common school funding.”
Ravitch writes that the 6-3 decision “is a big win for parents and public schools,” and that it “gives hope to parents all across America, who see charter schools draining funding from their public schools, favoring the privileges of the few over the rights of the many.”
RIP ‘Rico’, TBone man extraordinaire.
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-34162351
Not hard to work out the stuff of silly old duffer Armstrong’s bucket list is it ?http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11508719
Meanwhile the real issues away from the msm preoccupation with the jonkey PR flag change diversion and the stupid All Blacks …
This report dissects the looming financial crisis caused by the Western banksters….and billions of dollars fleeing out of China because of its consequent economic crisis …and propping up housing bubbles around the world..
( ..it has come to a place near you …the New Zealand and especially the Auckland housing crisis …and ..refutes those who accepted jonkey Nact framing and said this was a racism issue and castigated the NZLP for “crude racial profiling”..yes Greens )
…Gerald Celente does not pull his punches
Episode 806
https://www.rt.com/shows/keiser-report/314493-hurricanes-global-financial-markets/
“In this special episode of the Keiser Report from New York, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss the never seen before triple category four hurricanes heading for global financial markets caused by injection of too much hot air from central bankers. In the second half, Max interviews Gerald Celente about Rule 48, volatility and invasions.”
The coming total lunar eclipse on Sunday ( 27 – 28 September) has certain distinguishing features such as : (1). It is combining with supermoon ( pegree Moon ), (2) It is the fourth total lunar eclipse in series, (3). Energies being generated by planets such as Saturn, Mars, Jupiter and Rahu as carriers of these lunar eclipses in contemporary times are not as positive as human beings would have wished . The likely impact of the said phenomenon on earth and its inhabitants was explained by this Vedic astrology writer in article – “Total lunar eclipse of 28 September 2015 and the world”- published in June 2015 in Summer 2015 issue of The Astrologer’s Notebook , a quarterly publication in print from North Port, Florida. Readers may like to know that impacts of such celetial phenomena are not confined to the day these occur. The eclipse comes to 27 September in some parts of west. Some months before and after also, the impact remains. Already in contemporary times recently , these happenings have hit the headlines of newspapers : migrant refugee crisis in Europe, global economy slowdown, volcano eruptions, huge tragedy in holy shrine of Mecca , devastating 8.3 magnitude earthquake in Chile, massive fire in California and elsewhere, threats of war by different countries, burning Middle East, unprecedented happenings in Japan, China and Thailand , danger to food crops by drought, floods, inhospitable weather and storms . It looks as if there is widespread environment of uncertainty. Are these uncommon or unusual happenings not a sign of said phenomena on 27 September 2015 ? But if by these phenomenon, world coming to an end or total extinction of mankind is meant, this writer does not subscribe to that opinion or prediction. Mankind is undoubtedly passing through tougher , harder and critical times which may likely cause before mid – 2016 wider damage or harm but end time of mankind as feared by some is neither disclosed nor supported by planetary impacts mentioned here.