Here's an intellectual challenge: disinformation & misinformation. Split the difference!
Four in five Kiwis believe some disinformation, report finds…
A newly released report paints a worrying picture for New Zealand, with four in every five Kiwis believing some sort of misinformation and many paradoxically believing misinformation is a threat to democracy.
Just more than half (54%) of those who strongly believed misinformation had quit mainstream media, the survey found.
I'll have a go at that one (first one's too hard). On the face of it, the reporter is telling us that misinformation got up & vacated the msm and 54% of folks strongly believed that it had done so. I recommend deciding the reporter was wrong and meant to write that 54% of folks had exited the msm consumption habit. A feast for grammarians…
an upward thrusting force that at once empowered and overwhelmed the causes which Act and its fellow travellers dismissed as “Woke”. This was the magma of Māori nationalism
Act placed itself athwart the Māori nationalists’ path. It promised to turn back the relentless advance of “Aotearoa” against “New Zealand”. The Treaty of Waitangi would be re-written, all traces of co-governance would be swept away. A new, written constitution would entrench Pakeha privilege forever.
No worries. Ain't a snowball's chance in hell the motley crew in ACT are capable of drafting a constitution let alone achieving a consensus on adopting it.
Please stop re-posting Daily Blog nonsense here. If people what to read it, they can do it for themselves. We can do without Trotter’s over-egged angstsy boomer racism.
Somewhat presupposes political initiatives advocating constitutional reform lack relevance tho. I'm tempted to agree with you but we must proceed on the basis of evidence.
First, you have a party heading north of 15% in the polls advocating it. According to the leftist, that is – I haven't noticed them doing so myself yet.
Second, this other leftist ex-PM has been doing so for quite a while:
Sir Geoffrey Palmer QC, Victoria University of Wellington, Te Herenga Waka – Faculty of Law…
Abstract: An address to the Constitutional Workshop of Pacific Women’s Watch New Zealand, delivered on 16 November 2019.
The address introduces Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Dr Andrew Butler’s two books, A Constitution for Aotearoa New Zealand and Towards Democratic Renewal – Ideas for Constitutional Change in New Zealand, and their proposals for a written constitution.
It discusses the principal obstacles to constitutional change in New Zealand, in addition to some concerning global trends and challenges to democracy overseas. It also canvasses a number of areas that are in need of reform, from electoral law to local government.
Does he, or is it just a chance to over-extend a metaphor with a slather of florid hyperbole? Perhaps he is bored and longs for some sort of upheaval, and isn't too fussy about what sort. Mostly though, he just needs a good editor.
And he does that volcano metaphor until way past when the magma has hardened..
But I agree with the point he is making..
Namely the significance of the 7.9 for the maori party in the latest roy morgan poll..
That there is a coalescing consensus round tpm..that is going on within maori political circles..(and why wouldn't they..?..)
And one of the drivers of this is the rise of the racist far-right act party..and their vows to roll back any affirmative action..to tear up the treaty..etc..etc..maori-bashing all the way up to the election..
And for maori..voting for tpm is the most effective way of pushing back against this racist agenda..
I expect tpm to do better than this 7.9% at the actual election…
And as for the election results.. whichever way it goes we are going to have a radical government..
Either the milquetoast national party..their genitals firmly in the grip of act..tearing up the treaty etc..
Or the milquetoast labour party…their genitals firmly in the grip of tpm and the greens..
Where we will see major moves on environmental/poverty issues…
The choice for voters could not be clearer/more focused..
Those days of moaning about lab/nats being tweedle dum and tweedle see…are consigned to history..
Namely the significance of the 7.9 for the maori party in the latest roy morgan poll..
No significance that I can see. One poll doesn't indicate a trend.
Looking at the polling over recent time, that 7+% looks somewhat like an outlier. TPM have tended been in the 3.5% to 4.5% range (way better than where they were at the start of the year).
I'll get interested if TPM get a few more high polls.
The trend is quite apparent – Natz on a steady slide under Luxon, Labour on the way up under Chippie.
Act will gain in proportion to Natz loss, while the Greens will remain steady (though I expect them to do better on election day) and the TPM will gain +5%.
A third term Labour/Greens/TPM government, ya hoo!
That was what I linked to on wikipedia for 2023. Right up to date, and generally favouring a left government at present.
The right really doesn't have traction. Compare it to the wikipedia poll pages for 2005 (probably the closest recent analogy). Then have a look at 2008 and 2017 for what two different types of a opposition winning combo looks like.
I don't think the Luxon has quite the political pull power of a Jacinda.
Meanwhile Barry Soper reckons there will be a change of government, coz of the numpties around Hipkins (this is just a reprise of the it's only Clark or Ardern lines).
Barry Soper is pretty useless at any kind of analysis. He seems to hoick most of his reckons out of his arse after having a boozy afternoon as far I can see.
But as you point out, he doesn't have wide repository of talking points (or 'noisome dags' as I prefer to frame them) and frequently recycles them.
I tend to only notice him if he does something surprising like being (in retrospect) actually right about something. Which means I haven't noticed him much for the last 25 years. He is one of those people who just claims analytical skills rather than exhibiting it.
Incidentally this kind of crap was what I would up doing a lot of work on in my youth…..
Matt Whitehead reckons it's technically not a poll of polls. I don't really understand the difference despite him explaining it to me.
It's not weighting the polls, it's just extrapolating gaps between them for the trendline. There's little to no judgement call in the maths, just reporting facts, essentially.
And I'd agree with him. However with the paucity of polls, the piss-poor sampling techniques used, and the sample sizes, no amount of massaging is going to do much to the lousy data.
Basically he is referring to the kind of data massaging that would work in the US or UK because of the number of polls and the frequency with which they are done. Even there it is fraught with actuality (ie elections) disagreeing with the elegant cross-poll analysis.
For the purposes of getting a general idea of trends (the only thing worth looking at), whoever is doing the wikipedia one has got it about right.
Suggests that Green voters are not evenly spread throughout the population also.
oh yeah, I hadn't considered that. So if the 1,000 or whatever people that week happened to be less urban, then less Greens? Wouldn't they be adjusting the pollees for things like rural/urban?
But that is less effective with smaller sample numbers. Those polling Green are in the tens in the normal sample size, while National and Labour are in the hundreds.
It only takes a few differences the sampled population between polls.
The scary correlation, is that voters for the Libertarian lunatics in ACT, appear to be more evenly spread
I suspect Māori, like young people, are also under represented in the voting, in both Māori and general rolls, which would cancel out the effect to an extent.
Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical analyst and writes on current New Zealand foreign policy and related geopolitical issues.
Is New Zealand about to join ‘NATO+’? That seems to be the effective endgame, if reports ahead of New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins’ attendance at the NATO summit in Lithuania are anything to go by.
A globe-trotting PM blithely joining Aotearoa to NATO while an election campaign gets under way in his absence is just the sort of smart move one would expect from Labour so I get why he's dreaming about it. Nothing wrong with outflanking the Nats on the right. It's a time-tested and proven strategy.
The sidelining of George Kennan with the continuance of NATO and expansion after the end of the Cold War (and end of the Warsaw Pact). And the consequences of this in Georgia and Ukraine (colour revolution).
China being allowed into the WTO order without formally ending the Korean War and removing American troops or autonomy for Taiwan within China as per Hong Kong. This led to the South China Sea moves and the American response – promotion of democracy in Hong Kong (the 1997 agreement only allowed autonomy till 2047), The resulting crackdown leading to American determination to secure Taiwan's continued self-governance.
USA unilateralism in Iraq and the NATO breach of the no fly zone in Libya leading to the development of BRICS.
The Russia-China alliance leading to Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (includes central Asian states of the former USSR, Pakistan and India and now Iran) and BRI going through Pakistani Kashmir leads to India playing a dual game within the QUAD (all while a BRIC and in the SCO group).
PRESENT
NATO is seeking non European collective security partners – given the UN is compromised by the veto.
Given our historic UN multi-lateralism bi-partisanship – this is easy for Labour.
NATO is also offering to support the containment of China – with partners such as those in the QUAD.
ASIA-PACIFIC
We have a nuclear free Pacific policy – so are not in ANZUS or AUKUS (but are security partners of Oz and might join up to AUKUS 11 – technology development co-operation).
We affirm the International Law of the Sea Conventions, thus have issues with China in the South China Sea. But not in Taiwan.
For us, the issue is not so much involvement in the containment of a nation that is now our major trading partner, but diplomacy.
Outflanking National on the right, bollocks.
It’s so centrist, that National says nothing. They’ll adopt it.
Excellent analysis & I bow to your grasp of the geopolitical relevance.
Outflanking National on the right, bollocks. It’s so centrist, that National says nothing. They’ll adopt it.
Only when in govt. Makes more sense for them to differentiate during the campaign – there are still voters who don't believe they're part of the same team…
If our foreign policy is to remain grounded in preserving some kind of rules-based global order in an increasingly multipolar world, we're much better off picking the "side" (such as it is) that's actually committed to preserving said order.
It's an inevitable choice irrespective of what political party is in power here.
Unless we want to abandon multilateralism, lose whatever street cred and trust we've accumulated in our relationships abroad, and sell out to whoever gives us the shiniest baubles irrespective of the political system we'd be implicitly supporting.
That's an option too. Just an incredibly shit one.
While Russia traditionally really dislikes a rules based global order.
The Chinese have done really well out of it once they decided to (mostly) be part of it. In many ways they have been pretty assiduous about following it and are getting better at it (admittedly only if you blur your vision and ignore a few things like the PCA Law of the Sea 2016 (?) decision on South China sea).
Dennis Frank – you must have a lot of time on your hands to indulge yourself so frequently here – up early, trawling sites to find something to enable your intellect to respond to. Be nice to have a variety of commenters though.
I deliberately waited a couple of hours due to Anne's similar hope yesterday, but none of them wrote in. There seems to be a significant dearth of leftists wanting to contribute here. As a radical centrist, I notice the lack from that part of the political spectrum since there was a huge ferment of such folk during my student years half a century back. I associated with them as a kindred spirit.
It's an interesting question on the interface between sociology and political activism: why has the ebb-tide on leftism gone out so far? I don't believe left-wingers are essentially stupid – which is what their collective non-performance indicates. There's something deeper happening in society to produce this mass effect.
But I gave myself a year off until recently, BG. I don't like Labour's sleep-walk. Aotearoa deserves better, and from the Greens too. Stimulating thought processes is a deliberate consciousness-raising strategy to those who deploy it – for the purpose of being helpful, on my part.
Anyone who doesn't like the consequences really ought to focus on themselves rather than me. I suspect leftists may be collectively baffled by their lack of traction. Well, the solution to that problem is to figure out why – not grizzle at anyone who tries to help them do so.
Yes, there's a real basis upon which to proceed, true. However the campaign is a political marketing exercise & I see no such endeavour on the left yet.
To me framing is the essence of that. Somehow they must weave an overview for the left that makes them seem a viable alternative to National/ACT.
Framing is then the nifty way of capturing the essence of that alternative – effectively enough to distill it into an impression on the minds of floating voters. Vox pops are the standard news media technique for flushing that out of the minds of the people and providing it to political marketers as feedback – so they can see if their message is percolating thro the social ecosystem.
From here on in, I'll be watching such media carefully to discern the zeitgeist. Currently we just have underwhelming by the Nat/Lab duo, with polling reflecting that. Lull before the storm??
I prefer to give personal attention when required.
Always fun when people give me a opportunity to demonstrate what 4 decades of training on the public nets does to an inherent attribute towards being really nasty and condescending.
Having been on the receiving end of your attention once or twice some years ago, that's a relief. I have tried to attune to the ethos here since then.
I realise that being a Labour voter you'll be irritated whenever I do a critique of something they've done or are doing, but I try to give them credit when due and one such occasion occurred earlier today when the PM gave a foreign policy speech. Heard it reported on the RNZ news & thought far out!
He got it right. Not just that, the key points that the editorial staff selected from his speech for their report indicated that they got resonance with the media too. That made him come across as an authentic leader for Aotearoa.
Thought it worthwhile to acknowledge that & I'll write about it on DR. I reckon it's auspicious & could be a real boost for Labour's prospects…
Unless they seem to be depending on it and just trolling.
I still have the little bit of code I wrote a long time ago that would automatically add 12 hours to specific annoying early morning commenters on Open Mike.
Along with the one that refuses high speed comments with a image of a monkey grinning.
Yip if your being pedantic, there's official posts posted by the ordained ministers of the standard, then there's freelance post/comments like mr Frank's, then there's ya run of the mill comments like this😉
It's an interesting question on the interface between sociology and political activism: why has the ebb-tide on leftism gone out so far? I don't believe left-wingers are essentially stupid – which is what their collective non-performance indicates. There's something deeper happening in society to produce this mass effect.
'Them's fighting words' Dennis Frank. Hopefully we will have a flurry of interested/interesting posters like we have had in the Science curriculum post.
I don't think Leftism is dead. Take a look at the Green Party tax and social policies. A Wealth Tax, rent controls and livable rental properties, with more to come at the election.
Labour's minimum wage and benefit rises have certainly helped the less well off; the numbers in poverty in NZ are starting to come down. I heard a guy on RNZ the other day saying that the increased minimum wage was encouraging backpackers to take jobs and work longer which is presumably true for locals too.
Under Labour there have been moves favouring public transport (light rail, cheap bus fares, cycleways, investment in rail). More than 10,000 state houses have been added (I saw 14,000 somewhere) and house prices have now fallen significantly from their ridiculous highs-a good thing that is still happening.
A Labour/Green/TPM government will continue this progress. A Luxon/Seymour government will take NZ back to housing bubbles, selling off state houses, tax changes favouring the top 5%, minimum wages frozen, roads of national insignificance and public transport will get crumbs.
Yes, the Greens have some (in my view – excellent) policies that truly differentiate themselves from NAct and Labour. NAct with their rush to make things awful as quickly as possible, and Labour with glacial incremental improvement that is overwhelmed by their love of neoliberal damage.
Now to promote Green policies as much as possible before the election!
My hot take is that the traditional left is dying due to its lack of boldness, desire to provide an actual point of difference from the status quo, and ability to keep it's shit together for longer than an electoral cycle or two.
It makes for good, don't scare the horses, middle-of-the-road, bread and butter politics. But on the flipside makes real progress agonisingly slow and electorally risky.
The question is how to shift the Overton Window back to the left.
A generation without home ownership would have to direct their attention to a regime without CGT (35/36 have one) or estate tax (24/36 have one) and say why not a wealth tax. For a nation without a CGT or estate tax the only alternative is the Greens wealth tax (historic failure to apply a CGT or estate tax catch up).
NACT know this and have a plan.
It's to replace their white boomer vote with an immigrant vote against Maori privilege (an update on their post Rogernmics attack on Maori on welfare).
Thus a government program opposed to UNDRIP implementation, any building on whanau ora and threatening to end WT and the HRC and a re-write of the Treaty – while adopting the US welfare and penal policy model to control "Maori". It would also not surprise if they were to criminalise public space protest.
Homophobic organisation which promotes the chemical castration of same sex attracted and neurodiverse children looses its attempt to close down a charity which supports Lesbian, Gay and Bi-sexual people.
"A transgender rights group has lost its case to have a gay rights organisation stripped of its charitable status in what is believed to be the first case of its kind in the UK.
Mermaids, which supports transgender, non-binary and gender diverse children and their families, had appealed against the decision of the Charity Commission to grant LGB Alliance charitable status in 2021.
It is thought to be the first time in the UK that a charity has sought to have the charitable status of another removed".
It is not just a "simple" disagreement. Gender ideology denies even the very existence of "same sex attraction". We are all supposed to be "homogenderal". We say that is homophobic as hell, and that is before we get into what they are telling children about sex and sexuality.
Linguistic imperialism (narrative control) is what it is. Possibly better put as "homosexualphobic", as not every lesbian, gay or bi person wants to be assimilated into the masculine or feminine or non-binary gender identity empire.
It possibly speaks to one difference within the community – LGB and LGB+. The other being lesbian women solidarity with safe women's spaces, which is a wider society issue.
It would be best if the adults sorted out co-existence in respectful ways without involving the children … there is a difference between educating children about society around them (larger than their own family) without placing them within that world while they are developing.
Adults are a bit complicated (sex, gender, sexuality etc).
I've never heard that term before, but it's spot on. I'd add "linguistic chauvanism" as well. The redefining of accepted terms with fierce enforcement, and shrieks of bigotry and Nazism to anyone who doesn't agree or even understand.
And the other side of the story. Trans youth charity Mermaids was supported by a coalition of LGBTQ+ groups in the challenge to LGB Alliance's charity status. They argued the group "shouldn’t be recognised as a charity because of it ‘exclusively focuses’ on anti-trans campaigning and not on the promotion of lesbian, gay and bisexual rights.” The LGB Alliance HQ is at 55 Tufton St, that nest of UK neo-lib think tanks.
"The tribunal…found Mermaids [due to being a charity itself] does not have legal standing to challenge the Charity Commission’s decision to recognise the LGB Alliance. Though it may be painted as such, the ruling is not a win or a vindication for the LGB Alliance. The ‘gender-critical’ group escaped judgement on a technicality."
"In its ruling, the tribunal stated that its two-person panel was split on the issue of whether the LGB Alliance is rightfully a charity. It declined to make a hypothetical conclusion on the issue. The tribunal also noted that the Charity Commission was seen to have concerns regarding the LGB Alliance going “beyond the boundaries of civilised debate”, and said these concerns “were well-founded”.
They argued the group "shouldn’t be recognised as a charity because of it ‘exclusively focuses’ on anti-trans campaigning and not on the promotion of lesbian, gay and bisexual rights.”
the T+ activists have run quite the propaganda campaign on this. Pink News can keep that running as long as it likes, but where is the evidence?
Meanwhile, in Feb 2021 Dave Hewitt wrote this fact check on one of the early accusations about LGBA. This highlights a number of common themes in such accusations, and makes a connection with Pink News who also took part in the LGBA hate trans propaganda.
The insanity of the Australian Liberal Party exposed over Robodebt.
NZ could/should have the same type of Royal Commission over MSD.
Bennett abused her power as a minister, using the media to attack individuals who complained about the impact of the brutality MSD reforms had created.
We also need a serious look at the p-house debacle. A Royal Commission into this would help as well.
40 minute video follows, the first 6 minutes covers all the key points.
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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 ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
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 ...
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 ...
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Here's an intellectual challenge: disinformation & misinformation. Split the difference!
Here's another intellectual challenge:
I'll have a go at that one (first one's too hard). On the face of it, the reporter is telling us that misinformation got up & vacated the msm and 54% of folks strongly believed that it had done so. I recommend deciding the reporter was wrong and meant to write that 54% of folks had exited the msm consumption habit. A feast for grammarians…
Trotter believes the Roy Morgan poll ratings: https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2023/07/07/unstoppable-and-explosive/
He sees
No worries. Ain't a snowball's chance in hell the motley crew in ACT are capable of drafting a constitution let alone achieving a consensus on adopting it.
Please stop re-posting Daily Blog nonsense here. If people what to read it, they can do it for themselves. We can do without Trotter’s over-egged angstsy boomer racism.
Somewhat presupposes political initiatives advocating constitutional reform lack relevance tho. I'm tempted to agree with you but we must proceed on the basis of evidence.
First, you have a party heading north of 15% in the polls advocating it. According to the leftist, that is – I haven't noticed them doing so myself yet.
Second, this other leftist ex-PM has been doing so for quite a while:
@ sanctuary..
What is the problem with diverse points of view..?
Do you yearn for a (pro-nuke) echo chamber…?
He takes a while to get there..but trotters observation is a valid one..
Does he, or is it just a chance to over-extend a metaphor with a slather of florid hyperbole? Perhaps he is bored and longs for some sort of upheaval, and isn't too fussy about what sort. Mostly though, he just needs a good editor.
I did wonder about that. A career essayist always needs a timely angle to develop into a thesis. Dog goes for bone![enlightened enlightened](https://cdn2.thestandard.org.nz/wp-content/plugins/ark-wysiwyg-comment-editor/ckeditor/plugins/smiley/images/lightbulb.png?x42494)
Trotter really does need an editor..
He takes an age to make his point..
And he does that volcano metaphor until way past when the magma has hardened..
But I agree with the point he is making..
Namely the significance of the 7.9 for the maori party in the latest roy morgan poll..
That there is a coalescing consensus round tpm..that is going on within maori political circles..(and why wouldn't they..?..)
And one of the drivers of this is the rise of the racist far-right act party..and their vows to roll back any affirmative action..to tear up the treaty..etc..etc..maori-bashing all the way up to the election..
And for maori..voting for tpm is the most effective way of pushing back against this racist agenda..
I expect tpm to do better than this 7.9% at the actual election…
And as for the election results.. whichever way it goes we are going to have a radical government..
Either the milquetoast national party..their genitals firmly in the grip of act..tearing up the treaty etc..
Or the milquetoast labour party…their genitals firmly in the grip of tpm and the greens..
Where we will see major moves on environmental/poverty issues…
The choice for voters could not be clearer/more focused..
Those days of moaning about lab/nats being tweedle dum and tweedle see…are consigned to history..
The change-train is a'coming..
Good comment, Phillip. Perhaps you have view from a different generation to me. If so, it's helpful. Such a huge move in Maoridom would be historic.
No significance that I can see. One poll doesn't indicate a trend.
Looking at the polling over recent time, that 7+% looks somewhat like an outlier. TPM have tended been in the 3.5% to 4.5% range (way better than where they were at the start of the year).
I'll get interested if TPM get a few more high polls.
Is anyone doing a poll of polls now?
Poll of polls Weka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2023_New_Zealand_general_election
The trend is quite apparent – Natz on a steady slide under Luxon, Labour on the way up under Chippie.
Act will gain in proportion to Natz loss, while the Greens will remain steady (though I expect them to do better on election day) and the TPM will gain +5%.
A third term Labour/Greens/TPM government, ya hoo!
That was what I linked to on wikipedia for 2023. Right up to date, and generally favouring a left government at present.
The right really doesn't have traction. Compare it to the wikipedia poll pages for 2005 (probably the closest recent analogy). Then have a look at 2008 and 2017 for what two different types of a opposition winning combo looks like.
I don't think the Luxon has quite the political pull power of a Jacinda.
Meanwhile Barry Soper reckons there will be a change of government, coz of the numpties around Hipkins (this is just a reprise of the it's only Clark or Ardern lines).
Barry Soper is pretty useless at any kind of analysis. He seems to hoick most of his reckons out of his arse after having a boozy afternoon as far I can see.
But as you point out, he doesn't have wide repository of talking points (or 'noisome dags' as I prefer to frame them) and frequently recycles them.
I tend to only notice him if he does something surprising like being (in retrospect) actually right about something. Which means I haven't noticed him much for the last 25 years. He is one of those people who just claims analytical skills rather than exhibiting it.
Incidentally this kind of crap was what I would up doing a lot of work on in my youth…..
![Noiseome dag](https://www.interest.co.nz/sites/default/files/styles/full_width/public/feature_images/dags.GIF?itok=h4NH6zdV)
Matt Whitehead reckons it's technically not a poll of polls. I don't really understand the difference despite him explaining it to me.
https://twitter.com/MJWhitehead/status/1635538144006385664
I assume the wiki is good enough for our purposes in terms of trend.
And I'd agree with him. However with the paucity of polls, the piss-poor sampling techniques used, and the sample sizes, no amount of massaging is going to do much to the lousy data.
Basically he is referring to the kind of data massaging that would work in the US or UK because of the number of polls and the frequency with which they are done. Even there it is fraught with actuality (ie elections) disagreeing with the elegant cross-poll analysis.
For the purposes of getting a general idea of trends (the only thing worth looking at), whoever is doing the wikipedia one has got it about right.
what do you make the GP swing around so much? Even allowing for the RM having outliers, there seems to be a lot of variation.
Statistical variation with smaller numbers plays a part. Only takes a dozen, out of the typical numbers polled, to change the Green result.
Suggests that Green voters are not evenly spread throughout the population also.
oh yeah, I hadn't considered that. So if the 1,000 or whatever people that week happened to be less urban, then less Greens? Wouldn't they be adjusting the pollees for things like rural/urban?
Of course they must have some weightings.
But that is less effective with smaller sample numbers. Those polling Green are in the tens in the normal sample size, while National and Labour are in the hundreds.
It only takes a few differences the sampled population between polls.
The scary correlation, is that voters for the Libertarian lunatics in ACT, appear to be more evenly spread
Something else to factor in… which supports the case I am making..is that maori are notoriously under-polled…
I suspect Māori, like young people, are also under represented in the voting, in both Māori and general rolls, which would cancel out the effect to an extent.
Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical analyst and writes on current New Zealand foreign policy and related geopolitical issues.
A globe-trotting PM blithely joining Aotearoa to NATO while an election campaign gets under way in his absence is just the sort of smart move one would expect from Labour so I get why he's dreaming about it. Nothing wrong with outflanking the Nats on the right. It's a time-tested and proven strategy.
HISTORY.
The sidelining of George Kennan with the continuance of NATO and expansion after the end of the Cold War (and end of the Warsaw Pact). And the consequences of this in Georgia and Ukraine (colour revolution).
China being allowed into the WTO order without formally ending the Korean War and removing American troops or autonomy for Taiwan within China as per Hong Kong. This led to the South China Sea moves and the American response – promotion of democracy in Hong Kong (the 1997 agreement only allowed autonomy till 2047), The resulting crackdown leading to American determination to secure Taiwan's continued self-governance.
USA unilateralism in Iraq and the NATO breach of the no fly zone in Libya leading to the development of BRICS.
The Russia-China alliance leading to Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (includes central Asian states of the former USSR, Pakistan and India and now Iran) and BRI going through Pakistani Kashmir leads to India playing a dual game within the QUAD (all while a BRIC and in the SCO group).
PRESENT
NATO is seeking non European collective security partners – given the UN is compromised by the veto.
Given our historic UN multi-lateralism bi-partisanship – this is easy for Labour.
NATO is also offering to support the containment of China – with partners such as those in the QUAD.
ASIA-PACIFIC
We have a nuclear free Pacific policy – so are not in ANZUS or AUKUS (but are security partners of Oz and might join up to AUKUS 11 – technology development co-operation).
We affirm the International Law of the Sea Conventions, thus have issues with China in the South China Sea. But not in Taiwan.
For us, the issue is not so much involvement in the containment of a nation that is now our major trading partner, but diplomacy.
Outflanking National on the right, bollocks.
It’s so centrist, that National says nothing. They’ll adopt it.
Excellent analysis & I bow to your grasp of the geopolitical relevance.![smiley smiley](https://cdn2.thestandard.org.nz/wp-content/plugins/ark-wysiwyg-comment-editor/ckeditor/plugins/smiley/images/regular_smile.png?x42494)
Outflanking National on the right, bollocks. It’s so centrist, that National says nothing. They’ll adopt it.
Only when in govt. Makes more sense for them to differentiate during the campaign – there are still voters who don't believe they're part of the same team…
Agreed SPC
If our foreign policy is to remain grounded in preserving some kind of rules-based global order in an increasingly multipolar world, we're much better off picking the "side" (such as it is) that's actually committed to preserving said order.
It's an inevitable choice irrespective of what political party is in power here.
Unless we want to abandon multilateralism, lose whatever street cred and trust we've accumulated in our relationships abroad, and sell out to whoever gives us the shiniest baubles irrespective of the political system we'd be implicitly supporting.
That's an option too. Just an incredibly shit one.
While Russia traditionally really dislikes a rules based global order.
The Chinese have done really well out of it once they decided to (mostly) be part of it. In many ways they have been pretty assiduous about following it and are getting better at it (admittedly only if you blur your vision and ignore a few things like the PCA Law of the Sea 2016 (?) decision on South China sea).
Dennis Frank – you must have a lot of time on your hands to indulge yourself so frequently here – up early, trawling sites to find something to enable your intellect to respond to. Be nice to have a variety of commenters though.
I deliberately waited a couple of hours due to Anne's similar hope yesterday, but none of them wrote in. There seems to be a significant dearth of leftists wanting to contribute here. As a radical centrist, I notice the lack from that part of the political spectrum since there was a huge ferment of such folk during my student years half a century back. I associated with them as a kindred spirit.
It's an interesting question on the interface between sociology and political activism: why has the ebb-tide on leftism gone out so far? I don't believe left-wingers are essentially stupid – which is what their collective non-performance indicates. There's something deeper happening in society to produce this mass effect.
You are posting a bit too much Dennis.
But I gave myself a year off until recently, BG. I don't like Labour's sleep-walk. Aotearoa deserves better, and from the Greens too. Stimulating thought processes is a deliberate consciousness-raising strategy to those who deploy it – for the purpose of being helpful, on my part.
Anyone who doesn't like the consequences really ought to focus on themselves rather than me. I suspect leftists may be collectively baffled by their lack of traction. Well, the solution to that problem is to figure out why – not grizzle at anyone who tries to help them do so.
I didn't say what you were posting was a problem, just that it was a little too much. But see my post re Labour and the Greens below. All is not lost!
Yes, there's a real basis upon which to proceed, true. However the campaign is a political marketing exercise & I see no such endeavour on the left yet.
To me framing is the essence of that. Somehow they must weave an overview for the left that makes them seem a viable alternative to National/ACT.
Framing is then the nifty way of capturing the essence of that alternative – effectively enough to distill it into an impression on the minds of floating voters. Vox pops are the standard news media technique for flushing that out of the minds of the people and providing it to political marketers as feedback – so they can see if their message is percolating thro the social ecosystem.
From here on in, I'll be watching such media carefully to discern the zeitgeist. Currently we just have underwhelming by the Nat/Lab duo, with polling reflecting that. Lull before the storm??
Maybe a 600 post per day limit, works elsewhere I hear.
I prefer to give personal attention when required.
Always fun when people give me a opportunity to demonstrate what 4 decades of training on the public nets does to an inherent attribute towards being really nasty and condescending.
But Dennis doesn't seem to deserve my attention.
Having been on the receiving end of your attention once or twice some years ago, that's a relief. I have tried to attune to the ethos here since then.
I realise that being a Labour voter you'll be irritated whenever I do a critique of something they've done or are doing, but I try to give them credit when due and one such occasion occurred earlier today when the PM gave a foreign policy speech. Heard it reported on the RNZ news & thought far out!
He got it right. Not just that, the key points that the editorial staff selected from his speech for their report indicated that they got resonance with the media too. That made him come across as an authentic leader for Aotearoa.
Thought it worthwhile to acknowledge that & I'll write about it on DR. I reckon it's auspicious & could be a real boost for Labour's prospects…
What's stopping you?
I agree.
People:
should be applauded.
Instead it seems to be almost grudging/politics of envy stuff.
If people don't want to read the posts, just scroll on by or make your posts.
Reality if you want to read a good thread, with good intro by Weka and with a good mix of posters, make your way to the science curriculum thread.
Wot shanreagh said..
the easiest way to change that is to comment on the topics you want to see discussed. Anyone can nab the first comment of the day in OM. Or DR
Unless they seem to be depending on it and just trolling.
I still have the little bit of code I wrote a long time ago that would automatically add 12 hours to specific annoying early morning commenters on Open Mike.
Along with the one that refuses high speed comments with a image of a monkey grinning.
tools 😈
A blog without posts is not worth visiting!
Doesn't take much effort to scroll on by.
I assume you mean comments rather than posts, yes?
Yip if your being pedantic, there's official posts posted by the ordained ministers of the standard, then there's freelance post/comments like mr Frank's, then there's ya run of the mill comments like this😉
Ta
'Them's fighting words' Dennis Frank. Hopefully we will have a flurry of interested/interesting posters like we have had in the Science curriculum post.
I don't think Leftism is dead. Take a look at the Green Party tax and social policies. A Wealth Tax, rent controls and livable rental properties, with more to come at the election.
Labour's minimum wage and benefit rises have certainly helped the less well off; the numbers in poverty in NZ are starting to come down. I heard a guy on RNZ the other day saying that the increased minimum wage was encouraging backpackers to take jobs and work longer which is presumably true for locals too.
Under Labour there have been moves favouring public transport (light rail, cheap bus fares, cycleways, investment in rail). More than 10,000 state houses have been added (I saw 14,000 somewhere) and house prices have now fallen significantly from their ridiculous highs-a good thing that is still happening.
http://www.voxy.co.nz/politics/5/405411
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/budget-2023-house-prices-to-fall-21-per-cent-and-not-recover-to-record-highs-until-2027-treasury-says/XXZPA3D7GNBRTIK4LWPBFIKW4I/
A Labour/Green/TPM government will continue this progress. A Luxon/Seymour government will take NZ back to housing bubbles, selling off state houses, tax changes favouring the top 5%, minimum wages frozen, roads of national insignificance and public transport will get crumbs.
Yes, the Greens have some (in my view – excellent) policies that truly differentiate themselves from NAct and Labour. NAct with their rush to make things awful as quickly as possible, and Labour with glacial incremental improvement that is overwhelmed by their love of neoliberal damage.
Now to promote Green policies as much as possible before the election!
My hot take is that the traditional left is dying due to its lack of boldness, desire to provide an actual point of difference from the status quo, and ability to keep it's shit together for longer than an electoral cycle or two.
It makes for good, don't scare the horses, middle-of-the-road, bread and butter politics. But on the flipside makes real progress agonisingly slow and electorally risky.
The question is how to shift the Overton Window back to the left.
It's a matter of time.
A generation without home ownership would have to direct their attention to a regime without CGT (35/36 have one) or estate tax (24/36 have one) and say why not a wealth tax. For a nation without a CGT or estate tax the only alternative is the Greens wealth tax (historic failure to apply a CGT or estate tax catch up).
NACT know this and have a plan.
It's to replace their white boomer vote with an immigrant vote against Maori privilege (an update on their post Rogernmics attack on Maori on welfare).
Thus a government program opposed to UNDRIP implementation, any building on whanau ora and threatening to end WT and the HRC and a re-write of the Treaty – while adopting the US welfare and penal policy model to control "Maori". It would also not surprise if they were to criminalise public space protest.
A bleak prospect indeed SPC.
I agree exactly SPC. While the noise appears in the white corner, the points are being scored quietly with migrants from South East Asia and China.
Homophobic organisation which promotes the chemical castration of same sex attracted and neurodiverse children looses its attempt to close down a charity which supports Lesbian, Gay and Bi-sexual people.
"A transgender rights group has lost its case to have a gay rights organisation stripped of its charitable status in what is believed to be the first case of its kind in the UK.
Mermaids, which supports transgender, non-binary and gender diverse children and their families, had appealed against the decision of the Charity Commission to grant LGB Alliance charitable status in 2021.
It is thought to be the first time in the UK that a charity has sought to have the charitable status of another removed".
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/lgb-alliance-charity-commission-london-jk-rowling-lgbt-b2370444.html
And others call them "transphobic" for being formed
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/matt-lucas-lgb-alliance-trans-b1929993.html.
But at least they did not try and deny another group charity status over the disagreement.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/rosie-duffield-lia-thomas-lbc-yvette-cooper-anneliese-dodds-b2045520.html
It is not just a "simple" disagreement. Gender ideology denies even the very existence of "same sex attraction". We are all supposed to be "homogenderal". We say that is homophobic as hell, and that is before we get into what they are telling children about sex and sexuality.
Linguistic imperialism (narrative control) is what it is. Possibly better put as "homosexualphobic", as not every lesbian, gay or bi person wants to be assimilated into the masculine or feminine or non-binary gender identity empire.
It possibly speaks to one difference within the community – LGB and LGB+. The other being lesbian women solidarity with safe women's spaces, which is a wider society issue.
It would be best if the adults sorted out co-existence in respectful ways without involving the children … there is a difference between educating children about society around them (larger than their own family) without placing them within that world while they are developing.
Adults are a bit complicated (sex, gender, sexuality etc).
https://studylib.net/doc/9063804/transgender-article
I've never heard that term before, but it's spot on. I'd add "linguistic chauvanism" as well. The redefining of accepted terms with fierce enforcement, and shrieks of bigotry and Nazism to anyone who doesn't agree or even understand.
And the other side of the story. Trans youth charity Mermaids was supported by a coalition of LGBTQ+ groups in the challenge to LGB Alliance's charity status. They argued the group "shouldn’t be recognised as a charity because of it ‘exclusively focuses’ on anti-trans campaigning and not on the promotion of lesbian, gay and bisexual rights.” The LGB Alliance HQ is at 55 Tufton St, that nest of UK neo-lib think tanks.
"The tribunal…found Mermaids [due to being a charity itself] does not have legal standing to challenge the Charity Commission’s decision to recognise the LGB Alliance. Though it may be painted as such, the ruling is not a win or a vindication for the LGB Alliance. The ‘gender-critical’ group escaped judgement on a technicality."
"In its ruling, the tribunal stated that its two-person panel was split on the issue of whether the LGB Alliance is rightfully a charity. It declined to make a hypothetical conclusion on the issue. The tribunal also noted that the Charity Commission was seen to have concerns regarding the LGB Alliance going “beyond the boundaries of civilised debate”, and said these concerns “were well-founded”.
You need to be careful with these so called LGBT++++++ groups. Like Stonewall – many of them are now reliant on the T+++++++ for their funding.
In 2001, Stonewall set up the Diversity Champions Programme to act as a stamp of approval that indicated a company properly supported gay employees.
Then things changed; and Stonewall's focus moved away from a genuine desire to help gay people to enforcing its own theories about gender identity."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11564363/I-helped-Stonewall-today-plead-business-public-body-reconsider.html?fbclid=IwAR0BVBsDuGloVgNrcbsDbIr6kXn5wK7t0qfJolqsWL5sW_yiJVipO941Zy0
The daily mail..?
That hotbed of reactionary agitprop..?
That total rag.. perhaps even a benchmark for reactionary rags..?
You cite this…?
Heh…!
Good luck with that.
Visubversa…The Trots?
what's the technicality?
the T+ activists have run quite the propaganda campaign on this. Pink News can keep that running as long as it likes, but where is the evidence?
Meanwhile, in Feb 2021 Dave Hewitt wrote this fact check on one of the early accusations about LGBA. This highlights a number of common themes in such accusations, and makes a connection with Pink News who also took part in the LGBA hate trans propaganda.
https://www.voidifremoved.co.uk/p/fact-checking-oz-katerji
LGBA's website addressing some of the myths about them,
https://lgballiance.org.uk/facts/
And their purpose,
https://lgballiance.org.uk/policies/
The Charity Commission's original decision April 2021,
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/lgb-alliance/lgb-alliance-full-decision
The tribunal ruling.
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Mermaids-v-Charity-Commission-judgment-060723.pdf
Hector has fallen. 10 years after the founding of the Taxpayer Union, DPF has retired, wary of the fight against
But the light has not gone
There are good people, who do not agree with Jordan and his allies on the Board.
PS Chasing 3 and 6 year olds around the house would get tiring.
Link?
Just an email this morning.
This on their site.
https://www.taxpayers.org.nz/co_founder_retiring
The insanity of the Australian Liberal Party exposed over Robodebt.
NZ could/should have the same type of Royal Commission over MSD.
Bennett abused her power as a minister, using the media to attack individuals who complained about the impact of the brutality MSD reforms had created.
We also need a serious look at the p-house debacle. A Royal Commission into this would help as well.
40 minute video follows, the first 6 minutes covers all the key points.