Two things from yesterday I thought I would repost as they appeared at the end of the evening thread and are worthy of a wider audience.
Another Guardian article looking at the sorry state of New Zealand’s housing.
Excerpts.
So who owns these properties?
Increasingly, not New Zealanders. Foreign investment in Auckland has boomed under the National party government (this is not confined to Auckland). According to Core Logic in 2012, 37% of buyers were investors. Today that proportion is nearly 50%, a significant number of whom are Chinese.
What are the downsides of the boom?
It’s not been called a “crisis” lightly. Just before winter, stories emerged of hundreds of people living in tents, garages and shipping containers because they could not afford to rent, were on waiting lists for a state house or had given up trying.
Families with newborns were discovered sleeping in cars and under bridges and were taken in by local maraes (Māori meeting houses).
Homelessness has reached an unprecedented level and it’s no longer just affecting the unemployed. Some families with one or two wage-earning adults (usually in minimum-wage employment, which is NZ$15.25) are unable to afford a roof over their head. Garages with no toilet or cooking facilities are being advertised on Trade Me for NZ$500.
“Foreign investment in Auckland”
“Investment” is a misnomer. It is exploitation and manipulation that is happening, not investment. Similarly, the “Halo effect” is hardly a halo when it brings homelessness and misery to many.
The homeless need a rental… they need home owned by an “investor”, be it the state or a private individual. How many of the people living in cars or garages do you think could afford to buy a house even if the price was half that of current levels?
Excuse me, Scott, but under current conditions an “investor” is not even a ‘speculator’ (apparently a less desirable term).
Under current conditions, “Profit-Gouger” is the correct term. Please call them what they are – all of them. Until the current conditions are changed to reduce this ridiculous, unproductive profit-gouging in the property sector, our society and economy will continue to become more blighted than ever.
We need investors in the market. They are the ones that provide rental accommodation. Take the people living in cars. I doubt they would be in a position (in the near to medium term) to buy a house even if house prices halved. What they need is a rental. So 50% were bought by investors. So what. Why is that a bad thing, and if you think it a bad thing then what percentage would be alright… 45%, 40%, 10%? Why?
And then “a significant number of who are Chinese”. Leaving aside the implied racist undertone that a Chinese investor is worse than a Brit or a Canadian or whomever, that statement is simply not true. It is just made up.
In Auckland we know that about 4% are sold to foreign buyers, and about 2% to Chinese buyers in particular. That makes Chinese overseas resident investors about 4% of the total investors in the market (if it is that is half of all homes sold). Since when did 2% or 4% become “a significant number”?
On top of that, some of the Chinese investors will also be sellers. That is not accounted for by a reduction in the figures above. What we know is a kind of maximum, the figures as if no foreign investor ever sells. For all we know the net number of homes owned by overseas investors is actually dropping.
I took my stats from this article in the Herald (if there are more current ones I apologize but by the sound of it that does not substantively alter anything I said):
I hear what you’re saying about the tax status, but the problems with it cut both ways. In any event it is the best (only) measure we have at the moment. If the Guardian based their statement on anything else it is pure guesswork / speculation.
I’m not a fan of Winston, but I kinda like his call for a foreign buyers register. It may not solve the definitional issues you elude to, but it would at least be a start at accounting for those that leave the register as well as those that join it (getting us to a net figure).
Sure it alters what you said. You denied the alleged scale of Chinese investment using false statistics. It is not the ‘best’ measure we have, it isn’t a measure at all.
If you’re genuinely interested you can find a copy of the last Linz report by googling this;
Anyone reading it with an open mind should absorb the bit in the intro that says Linz estimate roughly half of property transfers involve a residential sale Despite this their statistics are for all property transfers and not the (estimated) half which are residential sales.
If you’re any good at maths you’d then realise the statistics are worthless for measuring anything except property transfers … you cannot extract any useful information on property sales from that data.
What then do you get your data from? [Chinese] sounding names?
The report you cite says in Auckland 5% of purchasers were foreign tax national and 3% were Chinese tax nationals. Not the 4% and 2% I had from the old stats.
And sure, that is not a complete picture, but neither is ignoring the sellers. That report says nationally 3% of vendors were foreign tax nationals, and 3% of purchasers were. The net change was zero (or negligible at least).
[Leave the racism out, Scott. Only warning. TRP]
Apologies TRP, it was not meant as racist but rather to mock the racism on those that tried to collect their “data” in such a way – I’ll be more careful.
You might want to ask yourself why you persists in talking about buyers & sellers Scott. The Linz report contains no statistics on property sales or property buyers & sellers. It is a record of property transfers.
Yesterday evening I challenged CV to come up with some solutions as he has tended to be very critical of everything at the moment.
His response.
Slash NZ herd sizes by 75%, reduce international air travel to ten 747 arrivals a week and ten 747 departures a week, add a $5/L levy to all liquid fuels and put all the funds into sustainable low carbon public transport and freight, pursue a policy of massively onshoring technological, engineering, scientific and manufacturing capabilities, double the size and reach of the NZDF and reorientate it for a relevant future.
Put the retail banks under clear central control and take back the authority for the government to issue funds that it requires.
Make moving to Auckland a highly restricted activity requiring a quota limited permit, and give 200,000 people clear ways to move out of that city.
Give every adult NZer a UBI of $60/week on top of whatever other income they currently have.
Enforce penalty rates for anything over 37.5 hours/week work, as well as any work on Sunday.
You guys want anything else? Just ask.
CV, I agree with almost everything you say. Controlling the banks is very important.
I am interested to know 2 more of your ideas:
1. how you plan to control multinational companies who, in many ways, are more powerful than nation states.
2. how you plan to create a more diverse media, less controlled by financial interests.
I like CV’s ideas too, and good idea to lay down that challenge to say what we want not just what we don’t want.
I also think we need to talk about *how these things could happen. Talking about ideas is important, but on its own it keeps us in a cull de sac. We need to look at how we get there from where we are now.
Well that’s also a very important point weka. And this answer might explain to you a bit of of my contemporary “anti-everything” attitude.
My first step to understanding “how these things could happen”, has been to stop pretending that any of the current political parties or any of their current political policies provides NZ with anything more than a C minus in terms of what the nation actually needs.
This harks back to MS’s question of me last night – which Parliamentary Party should the “collective left” support.
To me the answer is none of them, because all of one’s energy should be going into political activity which talks front and centre 24/7 about the actual answers we need, not into organisations and parties determined to keep presenting diluted watered down shadows of those answers.
My first step to understanding “how these things could happen”, has been to stop pretending that any of the current political parties or any of their current political policies provides NZ with anything more than a C minus in terms of what the nation actually needs.
You’re being generous. IMO, most of the policies of most political parties are still the absolute fail as all they’re doing is maintaining the same system that has failed badly throughout history.
To me the answer is none of them, because all of one’s energy should be going into political activity which talks front and centre 24/7 about the actual answers we need, not into organisations and parties determined to keep presenting diluted watered down shadows of those answers.
Yes it does. As you have noted for a long time, the status quo is now, to anyone willing to open their eyes, very clearly a very fast drive off a very short pier.
Coalesce around one issue – water. Everybody understands at a visceral level that we need water – good to drink, swim and fish-in water. No other political engagement necessary. Just take that issue and go for it, no holds barred until we get it. Take control of the media process, don’t be deflected by the “but,but what about roads, houses, fur-knuckled MPs …”, and make the story only about water.
Local body elections right now – demand to know what the candidates are going to do about it.
This is a huge opportunity to make big, bold capital-C Change.
1. Don’t allow multinational companies to operate here at all – comes in with the banning of offshore ownership really
2. A UBI @$400/week and a state publisher that will support anyone who wants to be a journalist by providing them with the needed resources to investigate and report on whatever they choose to
Slash NZ herd sizes by 75%, reduce international air travel to ten 747 arrivals a week and ten 747 departures a week…
Make moving to Auckland a highly restricted activity requiring a quota limited permit…
Leaving aside for a moment the question of what percentage of the party vote a party proposing to follow CV’s advice could expect to receive, any government that would be willing to grant itself the powers to issue decrees like the above is one that should be kept from power at all costs.
So, we just continue on with the present dictatorship of the corporations?
And a democracy is, by definition, not a dictatorship. And, yes, I think a majority of people would look to limiting tourists and immigration. The people in the communities are seeing the damage that they’re doing while the people in ‘government’ keep telling us it’s all good.
Depends on what Mana do between now and the election. There is a case to be made for building a movement over a long period of time so that eventually Mana has more influence. I have my doubts about this because of what happened at the last election, but I would love to see Harawira back in parliament. That’s a Maori voter issue though, Harawira getting back in.
In terms of the wider party vote, the issue is what % has to be gained to get past the gain of the electorate seat. If one votes for this election, rather than long term movement building, then there is a risk of lost votes. Likewise if Harawira doesn’t get TTT. Those are votes that could be better in Labour or the Greens in a tight election.
More extreme weather.
More reporting of that by the corporate media without the context of climate change.
What a sad little country we are becoming under Key.
I loved this description of Key I read in the Guardian.
“New Zealand is an increasingly dysfunctional and bizarre country, which seems to think it’s going to get rich building houses for immigrants. John Key, our PM, is an appalling man; a self-made multimillionaire from his arch skill at gambling with other people’s money in one of the most useless jobs invented by mankind, that of currency speculator, who treats his job as PM like the sort of insouciant hobby a man who needs nothing more in his life might take on as a pleasant interlude before retiring. He suffers from a pathological intellectual rigidity that straight-jackets his and his government’s actions; perish the thought that this man might stoop to intellectual enquiry and rational action.”
It is abundantly clear that John Key does not place the concerns of the citizens, or the future wellbeing of the country, as central to his neoliberal politics. He shamelessly pursues a neoliberal agenda, in service of the wealthy, that is even now crumbling upon its global overreach and reductionistic algorithms. He is, and has always exhibited, an envious eye to the powerful and would, it seems, ingratiate himself to them at the expense of the country he has been elected to serve. He imagines a new citizenry of the wealthy elites who can control economic realities and already exhibits distain for those upon whose backs he has ridden to power. Now in power, he is embarrassingly indifferent to the suffering his policies are creating and strikingly unaware that the model he has been sold, and is attempting to sell to New Zealand, is already considered obsolete by the world economic powers he embarrassingly,and so desperately, desires to be considered a member.
“He suffers from a pathological intellectual rigidity that straight-jackets his and his government’s actions”
Huh, I thought he steals Labour’s ideas, apparently not. Either that or the person that wrote this tosh suffers from a pathological intellectual rigidity that straight-jackets their ability to rationally critique John Key’s Prime Ministerial style?
[you are currently banned. See https://thestandard.org.nz/anti-corbyn-media-bias/#comment-1205982 I suggest when you return that you pick a consistent handle. Using multiple names is likely to get moderator attention, as is continuing to comment when you are banned – weka]
This reply might appear in the wrong place as the formatting of the Open Mike web page isn’t working for me at the moment.
1) Controlling foreign corporations: transnational corporations have access to some technologies, personnel, contacts, resources and abilities that can be highly useful. We set out to them (the Boards of Directors) very clearly what we want to achieve as a country, and seek strategic corporate partners who can help us reach those goals.
2) A more diverse media: a three pronged attack – on the quality front we leverage up TVNZ and RNZ in a big way. In a diversity front we create structures which support small scale independent media, publishing and blogging. On a corporate media regulatory front – we set clear regulatory standards for what can be called news, current affairs, etc.
Re: Mana. They can support some complementary positions but IMO they are not radical enough nor do they have a good/broad reach across the country.
Yesterday the standard wasn’t working for me from work, just got a blank white page. It happened again this morning, so I shift-F5’d the page and I got a certificate warning from Chrome. I selected to continue to the site.
So it seems like there might be an expired certificate of some sort?
I think that I had a cert that wasn’t fully trusted (trying Lets Encrypt). I replaced it with a multi-domain Comodo one last night. But it looks like that isn’t covering the SSL out to the CDN.
I’ve simply set the site to not use CDN on SSL for now. Higher load on the server…
Looks like some bits of js aren’t working for the comments. That is freaking odd.
I don’t care about the earthquakes, fracking-induced ones don’t get big and will mostly stop soon after the fracking stops. I care about the contaminated water and the greenhouse gas releases, which will cause problems for generations.
Lisa Marriott to Deliver 2016 Bruce Jesson Lecture
Monday 10th October, 6pm
All New Zealanders are Equal, but some are more equal than others
Due to limited seating, REGISTRATION IS ENCOURAGED
Why are those less advantaged in New Zealand society treated differently from those who are in relatively privileged positions? Why are white-collar tax evaders treated differently to welfare fraudsters? This talk will consider circumstances where this occurs, aiming to highlight and challenge issues of equity, privilege, and the construction of crime and criminals in New Zealand.
The presentation will cover:
Investigation, prosecution and sentencing of tax evaders and welfare fraudsters;
The sentencing of serious white-collar financial crime;
The individual treatment of taxpayers and the collective treatment of welfare recipients;
Different treatments of debtors to the Crown (taxpayers, welfare recipients and students);
The introduction of legislation that provides for more punitive treatment for partners of welfare fraudsters than the partners of those engaging in other financial offending; and,
The preferential treatment of the wealthy in the tax system
Monday 10th October, 6pm
Room G36, OGHLecTh, Old Government House (Building 401), University of Auckland
Dr Lisa Marriott is an Associate Professor of Taxation at Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Accounting and Commercial Law. Lisa’s research interests include social justice and inequality, and the behavioural impacts of taxation.
Lisa has publications in a range of refereed journals and is the author of The Politics of Retirement Savings Taxation: A Trans-Tasman Perspective. Her work is interdisciplinary covering disciplines including sociology, political science and public policy. Lisa was awarded a Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Grant to investigate the different treatments of tax evasion and welfare fraud in the New Zealand justice system.
Lisa has worked in the private sector in the United Kingdom and in the public sector in New Zealand. For the past ten years, Lisa has worked in academia.
Due to limited seating, REGISTRATION IS ENCOURAGED
Trump didn’t just donate, he hosted a fundraiser for Bondi at Mar-A-Lago after she passed on investigating Trump U https://t.co/H25aFUAx1r— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) September 7, 2016
Looks like Trump tried to bribe NY AG, then accused him of soliciting a bribe while simultaneously bribing Pam Bondi https://t.co/T8RAWa9aB9— Laura (@SheWhoVotes) September 7, 2016
But if MPs were to live in fear of whatever some rich doofus might take offence at and decide to sue over, the House would be the only place an MP would ever open their mouths.
On the surface this is appealing, but in the long run it would get in the way of mps doing their damned job.
No, parliamentary privilege is so they can make explicit allegations and statements of fact in the House. You know, actual controversial shit, rather than requesting that public funds are disseminated in a demonstrably impartial and uncorrupt manner.
He said the timing stinks to high heaven, if I was Earl then I’d be suitably miffed at what Little said and want either proof or an apology because it sounds like Little is saying Earl bribed (or doing something dodgy) his way to a contract
So yeah that sounds like a pretty explicit allegation
The timing did fucking stink. Little was right to demand that the processes be examined to ensure it was nothing more than coincidence that a nat donor’s company gets a contract so soon after a large donation. That’s just stating the bleeding obvious.
An explicit allegation would have been a direct claim of quid pro quo contracts-for-donations arrangement. This claim was never made. What was made was a demand that public money be spent in a demonstrably clean manner.
Anything’s litigable. Whether hagaman gets a penny remains to be seen.
You’re not asking why he didn’t raise the issue in the House.
You’re asking why he dared raise the issue anywhere else.
Goff, shearer, Twyford and James Shaw all raised different aspects of the affair in the House.
It is difficult to imagine how Little could make a formal written request to the AG for them to investigate solely using the debates with the house.
Basically, the thrust of your argument seems to require that Little make noises in the House, but actually do nothing. ever. For fear that some jerk takes offence and sues.
Why?
If little wanted to defend a lawsuit, he’d have made an explicit allegation.
If Hagaman’s just throwing money at a lawsuit in the hope that it inconveniences or intimidates MPs, screw that guy. They’re our representatives, not his lackeys.
But that doesn’t mean that most people wouldn’t have a fair idea going into it what the result will be. Case law is public record, after all.
Funnily enough, one of the first things a lawyer told friends of mine when they were considering legal action was to writer out a budget of what they wanted vs what they were willing to spend. It that’s the opening advice for a minor retaining wall dispute, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hagaman received similar advice, and Little. So someone’s basically decided that they can afford the costs regardless of the poor likelihood of outcome.
Why would Little withdraw the comment? The deal was suspicious, did need investigating, and in fact was investigated, albeit not by someone with the authority to actually find any evidence of wrongdoing if it exists. We’re not allowed to state the obvious now, or something?
I’m saying if theres a mechanism where a minister can basically say what they like without repercussion then, unless they’re after some free publicity, why wouldn’t they choose to use it?
Because that would make it the only place that they could ever say anything.
No comments to media. No public speeches. No party conferences. Because who knows what someone with more money than self esteem would take offence at – if demanding the AG do their job is defamatory, everything’s defamatory.
lol
Yes, he was acting in his role as a public representative. I know that this might be a difficult concept for you to grasp.
But also he simply asked someone to do their job because he probably has a pretty damned good idea about what is likely to be successfully actionable and what is not. Whereas Hagaman has probably already decided how much he’s prepared to spend out of pure petulance, actual verdict be damned.
Ok when Little said the deal stunk to heaven he was inferring the Hagamans were corrupt because they were giving the government a donation in return for being awarded a contract
Ok when Little said the deal stunk to heaven he was inferring the Hagamans were corrupt because they were giving the government a donation in return for being awarded a contract
No, he was explicitly stating that the coincidence of the two events (donation and contract) was suspicious. His request to the AG was to allay that suspicion.
Suspicion is not a crime, or even defamatory. Otherwise every complaint to the police is defamatory.
Yeah. PR is talking poor quality horseshit, probably because he has a very poor understanding of what the actual law defamation requires. The decision is made on any distortion of facts, not on the damage to reputations – which is what PR in his ignorance clearly expects.
But the facts appear to incontrovertible, so there was no reason for Andrew Little to make them in the house.
The implication by the Hagaman that thsoe facts taken together may have damaged their reputation is completely irrelevant in defamation except at the last stage AFTER a judgement is made. What their lawyers have to show is that Little invented or distorted facts.
However Andrew Little didn’t as far as I can see because he merely stated facts about a political donation and a government contract that were already on the public record. That those facts taken together throw a lot of questions about the morality and use of political donations to tap government funds with this government is rather incidental.
However as far as I can tell Andrew Little only pointed to those facts and asked if there was a cause for public concern. Perfectly legitimate at every level in the circumstances. The Hagamans (and McCully) answered, but hardly (in my view) in any kind of adequate manner because they didn’t dispute either of Little’s two facts.
Basically, if you want to make political donations and don’t want questions about what expectations you or the political party may have of the result of that donation, then it needs to be damn clear that there aren’t any personal expectations. That was in this case, that simply was not clear.
Unless there is something that I don’t know about it, I think that the Hagamans are simply doing some rather stupid legal grandstanding
Tell you what, if Little apologizes (which is him basically admitting he screwed up) and/or this goes to court and Little is found guilty (however you want to legally put it) you apologize to me
If the opposite happens and Little is found not guilty (again however the courts decide) I’ll donate $5 to the Labour party (or apologize to whoever)
Authority without sufficient power to gather evidence finds no evidence of wrongdoing. Fair enough.
As for “saying stuff like this without getting sued”, it seemed pretty reasonable to me. He didn’t make an allegation, he wanted demonstrable evidence that the job of sorting the contract had been done correctly. By Hagaman’s logic, all auditors are defaming the people they audit, simply by doing their job.
Unless every meeting between a national party member and the hagamans was being recorded it would be impossible to find evidence of A Nod And A Wink, which is the standard way of arranging dodgy deals.
Like Commissions of Enquiry with Terms of Reference which are narrow and useless, it seems the AG is also limited in what she can deliver without sufficient access to information – our watchdogs are being fenced and muzzled methinks.
You see what it is really is Earlie’s the sorta bloke who likes to dole out money to pollies and he’s the sorta bloke who governments like to chuck money at. Just one of those things.
Well, with all the worrying situations above its lovely to see “the ghastly political Right fight in public and extra satisfying to have Craig and the awful Rankin fighting in public . Its better than a Tom Sharp novel. I wonder what the next revelation will be.
Williams was dealt to today. He’s such a phony. You can tell from his turns of phrase. Always thought that. Used to show when he was on Jim Mora’s show. No different now.
David Bennett seems incapable of distinguishing between peaceful acts of protest in a free society and acts of terrorism. So anyone protesting the visit of a warship, a la 1980s protests, will soon be charged with terrorism?
Yes the distinction will need to be defined in law, which requires some brain work but to ignore the distinction is an act of laziness and/or blind conservative toadyism.
“Every week Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert look at all the scandal behind the financial news headlines.
In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max and Stacy discuss the mega week in the news: from Apple’s mega tax bill to Trump’s ‘yuuuge’ visit to Mexico. They also discuss Mark Carney’s warning about “dishonest bankers” and their “misconduct” threatening another mega disaster in the financial markets.
In the second half, Max interviews MegaUpload.com founder, Kim Dotcom (@kimdotcom) and his lawyer, Ira Rothken (@rothken), about MegaUpload 2.0 and Bitcache. They also discuss his ongoing trial against the might of the Hollywood copyright industry and the US government.”
I inadvertently saw bits of Hosking and co. tonight. Some ‘prank’ about one of them having birthday. Honestly ..Do they think we are interested in their celebrity birthdays or their silly in house kiddie games? It’s so shallow and trivia driven.I want news stuff or intelligent comment about real issues..
Personally I don’t give a toss about their self obsessed pretensions except it annoys me is that I’m paying for it. And is he still wearing those whatever splattered pants?
I’m starting to sound Morrisyish. Grrr ..go read a book.
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If we needed any confirmation, we have it in spades in today’s edition of the Herald; our supposedly leading daily newspaper is determined to do what it can to decide the outcome of the next election – to act, that is, not as a newspaper but as the mouthpiece for ...
Sean Plunkett, founding editor of the new media outlet, The Platform, was interviewed on RNZ's highly regarded flagship programme "Mediawatch".Mr Plunkett has made much about "cancel culture" and "de-platforming". On his website promoting The Platform, he outlines his mission statement thusly:The Platform is for everyone; we’re not into cancelling or ...
“That’s a C- for History, Kelvin!”While it is certainly understandable that Māori-Crown Relations Minister Kelvin Davis was not anxious to castigate every Pakeha member of the House of Representatives for the crimes committed against his people by their ancestors; crimes from which his Labour colleagues continue to draw enormous benefits; the ...
The Government promised a major reform of New Zealand’s immigration system, but when it was announced this week, many asked “is that it?” Over the last two years Covid has turned the immigration tap off, and the Government argued this produced the perfect opportunity to reassess decades of “unbalanced immigration”. ...
While the new fiscal rules may not be contentious, what they mean for macroeconomic management is not explained.In a pre-budget speech on 3 May 2022, the Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, made some policy announcements which will frame both this budget and future ones. (The Treasury advice underpinning them is ...
Under MMP, Parliament was meant to look like New Zealand. And, in a lot of ways, it does now, with better representation for Māori, tangata moana, women, and the rainbow community replacing the old dictatorship of dead white males. But there's one area where "our" parliament remains completely unrepresentative: housing: ...
Justice Denied: At the heart of the “Pro-Life” cause was something much darker than conservative religious dogma, or even the oppressive designs of “The Patriarchy”. The enduring motivation – which dares not declare itself openly – is the paranoid conviction of male white supremacists that if “their” women are given ...
In case of emergency break glass— but glass can cut Fire extinguishers, safety belts, first aid kits, insurance policies, geoengineering: we never enjoy using them. But given our demonstrated, deep empirical record of proclivity for creating hazards and risk we'd obviously be foolish not to include emergency responses in our inventory. ...
After a brief hiatus, the “A View from Afar” podcast is back on air with Selwyn Manning leading the Q&A with me. This week is a grab bag of topics: Russian V-Day celebrations, Asian and European elections, and the impact of the PRC-Solomon Islands on the regional strategic balance. Plus ...
Last year, Vanuatu passed a "cyber-libel" law. And predictably, its first targets are those trying to hold the government to account: A police crackdown in Vanuatu that has seen people arrested for allegedly posting comments on social media speculating politicians were responsible for the country’s current Covid outbreak has ...
Could it be a case of not appreciating what you’ve got until it’s gone? The National Party lost Simon Bridges last week, which has reinforced the notion that the party still has some serious deficits of talent and diversity. The major factor in Bridges’ decision to leave was his failed ...
Who’s Missing From This Picture? The re-birth of the co-governance concept cannot be attributed to the institutions of Pakeha rule, at least, not in the sense that the massive constitutional revisions it entails have been presented to and endorsed by the House of Representatives, and then ratified by the citizens of New ...
Fiji signed onto China’s Belt and Road initiative in 2018, along with a separate agreement on economic co-operation and aid. Yet it took the recent security deal between China and the Solomon Islands to get the belated attention of the US and its helpmates in Canberra and Wellington, and the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Lexi Smith and Bud Ward “CRA” It’s one of those acronyms even many-a-veteran environmental policy geek may not recognize. Amidst the scores and scores of acronyms in the field – CERCLA, IPCC, SARA, LUST, NPDES, NDCs, FIFRA, NEPA and scores more – ...
In a nice bit of news in a World Gone Mad, I can report that Of Tin and Tintagel, my 5,800-word story about tin (and political scheming), is now out as part of the Spring 2022 edition of New Maps Magazine (https://www.new-maps.com/). As noted previously, this one owes a ...
Dr Jennifer Summers, Professor Michael Baker, Professor Nick Wilson* Summers J, Baker M, Wilson N. Covid-19 Case-Fatality Risk & Infection-Fatality Risk: important measures to help guide the pandemic response. Public Health Expert Blog. 11 May 2022. In this blog we explore two useful mortality indicators: Case-Fatality Risk (CFR) and Infection-Fatality ...
In the depths of winter, most people from southern New Zealand head to warmer climes for a much-needed dose of Vitamin D. Yet during the height of the last Ice Age, one species of moa did just the opposite. I’m reminded of Bill Bailey’s En Route to Normal tour that visited ...
In the lead-up to the Budget, the Government has been on an offensive to promote the efficiency and quality of its $74 billion Covid Response and Recovery Fund -especially the Wage Subsidy Scheme component. This comes after criticisms and concerns from across the political spectrum over poor-quality spending, and suggestions ...
Elizabeth Elliot Noe, Lincoln University, New Zealand; Andrew D. Barnes, University of Waikato; Bruce Clarkson, University of Waikato, and John Innes, Manaaki Whenua – Landcare ResearchUrbanisation, and the destruction of habitat it entails, is a major threat to native bird populations. But as our new research shows, restored ...
Unfinished: Always, gnawing away at this government’s confidence and empathy, is the dictum that seriously challenging the economic and social status-quo is the surest route to electoral death. Labour’s colouring-in book, and National’s, have to look the same. All that matters is which party is better at staying inside the lines.DOES ...
Radical As: Māori healers recall a time when “words had power”. The words that give substance to ideas, no matter how radical, still do. If our representatives rediscover the courage to speak them out loud.THERE ARE RULES for radicalism. Or, at least, there are rules for the presentation of radical ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters A brutal, record-intensity heat wave that has engulfed much of India and Pakistan since March eased somewhat this week, but is poised to roar back in the coming week with inferno-like temperatures of up to 50 degrees Celsius (122°F). The ...
The good people at the Reading Tolkien podcast have put out a new piece, which spends some time comparing the underlying moral positions of George R.R. Martin and J.R.R. Tolkien: (The relevant discussion starts about twenty-seven minutes in. It’s a long podcast). In the interests of fairness, ...
Crime is becoming a key debate between Labour and National. This week they are both keen to show that they are tough on law and order. It’s an issue that National has a traditional advantage on, and is one that they’re currently getting good traction from. In response, Labour is ...
So far, the excited media response to the spike in “ram-raid” incidents is being countered by evidence that in reality, youth crime is steeply in decline, and has been so for much of the past decade. Who knew? Perhaps that’s the real issue here. Why on earth wasn’t the latest ...
In the past 10 years or so – and that’s how quickly it has happened – all our comfortable convictions about the unassailability of free speech have been turned on their heads. Suddenly we find ourselves fighting again for rights we assumed were settled. Click here to watch the video ...
Enforced Fertility: The imminent overturning of Roe versus Wade by the US Supreme Court is certain to raise echoes here that are no less evocative of the dystopia envisioned by Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid’s Tale. Gilead can happen here.WITH THE UNITED STATES seemingly on the brink of becoming “Gilead”, ...
Not Wanted On Grounds Of Political Rejuvenation: Winston Peters did nothing more than visit the protest encampment erected by anti-vaxxers on the parliamentary lawn. A great many New Zealanders applauded him for meeting with the protesters and wondered why the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition could not do ...
May The Force Be With Us: With New Zealanders under 40, nostalgia for a time when politics worked gains little purchase. Politics hasn’t swerved to any noticeable degree since the 1980s, becoming in the Twenty-First Century a battle between marketing strategies, not ideologies. Young New Zealanders critique political advertisements in ...
Dane Giraud reflects on his working class upbringing and how campaigning for free speech radicalised him Evidence to support censorship as a tool for social cohesion is paltry. I Read the NZ Human Rights Commission website, and 99% of their ‘evidence’ is anecdotal. When asked why we need hate speech ...
As you may have noticed, I have been slowly working my way through the works of Agatha Christie. At the time of writing, I have read some thirty-eight of her books – less than half her total output, but arguably enough to get a reasonable handle on it. It ...
Population growth has some effect on economic growth, but it is complicated especially where infrastructure is involved. We need to think more about it. In an opinion piece in the New Zealand Herald, John Gascoigne claimed that New Zealand was a ‘tragic tale of economic decline’. He gave no evidence ...
The Greens have been almost invisible since the 2020 election. Despite massive crises impacting on people’s lives, such as climate change, housing, inequality, and the cost of living, they’ve had very little to say. On this week’s highly contentious issue of politicians being banned from Parliament by Trevor Mallard, the ...
The government has announced it will be replacing all coal boilers in schools by 2025: All remaining coal boilers in New Zealand schools will be replaced with cleaner wood burners or electric heating by 2025, at a cost of $10 million, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced. The coal ...
Israeli news media and politicians often complain about the activity of neo-Nazis in Ukraine. “Activists and supporters of Ukrainian nationalist parties hold torches as they take part in a rally to mark the 112th birth anniversary of Stepan Bandera, in Kyiv, Ukraine, January 1, 2021. Credit: Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters The recent ...
Another gnawing warming worry Accidental outcomes of our engineering prowess are warming Arctic regions at a rapid pace. Another species of accomplished engineers is rapidly occupying and exploiting new territory we've thereby made more easily available, namely beavers (Castor canadensis). Beaver populations in affected Arctic regions have increased from "none" to "quite a ...
Dr Simon Lambert’s dream is to see Indigenous nations across the world exercising their sovereign rights by adding their say to disaster risk reduction planning. Simon, of Ngāi Tūhoe and Ngāti Ruapani ki Waikaremoana, specialises in indigenous disaster risk reduction, indigenous health and indigenous development, social science, environmental management, planning ...
Rukingi Haupapa (Ngāti Whakaue, Te Arawa) credits his stroke in 2005 for changing his life: leading him to change his name, get his mataora (facial moko) and set up a trust to help fellow stroke survivors. Oranga (health and wellbeing) is Rukingi’s passion. He holds a Master’s degree in Indigenous ...
CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY Mr Speaker, It has taken four-and-a-half years to even start to turn the legacy of inaction and neglect from the last time they were in Government together. And we have a long journey in front of us! ...
Today Greens Te Mātāwaka Chair and Health Spokesperson, Dr Elizabeth Kerekere, said “The Greens have long campaigned for an independent Māori Health Authority and pathways for Takatāpui and Rainbow healthcare. “We welcome the substantial funding going into the new health system, Pae Ora, particularly for the Māori Health Authority, Iwi-Partnership ...
Budget 2022 shows progress on conservation commitments in the Green Party’s cooperation agreement Green Party achievements in the last Government continue to drive investment in nature protection Urgent action needed on nature-based solutions to climate change Future budget decisions must reflect the role nature plays in helping reduce emissions ...
Landmark week for climate action concludes with climate budget Largest ever investment in climate action one of many Green Party wins throughout Budget 2022 Budget 2022 delivers progress on every part of the cooperation agreement with Labour Budget 2022 is a climate budget that caps a landmark week ...
Green Party welcomes extension to half price fares Permanent half price fares for Community Services Card holders includes many students, which helps implement a Green Party policy Work to reduce public transport fares for Community Services Card holders started by Greens in the last Government Budget 2022 should be ...
New cost of living payment closely aligned to Green Party policy to expand the Winter Energy Payment Extension and improvement of Warmer Kiwi Homes builds on Green Party progress in Government Community energy fund welcomed The Green Party welcomes the investment in Budget 2022 to expand Warmer Kiwi ...
Budget 2022 support to reduce homelessness delivers on the Green Party’s cooperation agreement Bespoke support for rangatahi with higher, more complex needs The Green Party welcomes the additional investment in Budget 2022 for kaupapa Māori support services, homelessness outreach services, the expansion of transitional housing, and a new ...
Green Party reaffirms call for liveable incomes and wealth tax Calls on Government to cancel debt owed to MSD for hardship assistance such as benefit advances, and for over-payments The Green Party welcomes the support for people on low incomes Budget 2022 but says more must be done ...
Our Government has just released this year’s Budget, which sets out the next steps in our plan to build a high wage, low carbon economy that gives economic security in good times and in bad. It’s full of initiatives that speed up our economic recovery and ease cost pressures for ...
A stronger democracy is on the horizon, as Golriz Ghahraman’s Electoral (Strengthening Democracy) Amendment Bill was pulled from the biscuit tin today. ...
Tomorrow, the Government will release this year’s Budget, setting out the next steps in our plan to build a high wage, low carbon economy that gives economic security in good times and in bad. While the full details will be kept under wraps until Thursday afternoon, we’ve announced a few ...
As a Government, we made it clear to New Zealanders that we’d take meaningful action on climate change, and that’s exactly what we’ve done. Earlier today, we released our next steps with our Emissions Reduction Plan – which will meet the Climate Commission’s independent science-based emissions reduction targets, and new ...
Emissions Reduction Plan prepares New Zealand for the future, ensuring country is on track to meet first emissions budget, securing jobs, and unlocking new investment ...
The Greens are calling for the Government to reconsider the immigration reset so that it better reflects our relationship with our Pacific neighbours. ...
Hamilton City Council and Whanganui District Council have both joined a growing list of Local Authorities to pass a motion in support of Green Party Drug Reform Spokesperson Chlöe Swarbrick’s Members’ bill to minimise alcohol harm. ...
Today, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a major package of reforms to address the immediate skill shortages in New Zealand and speed up our economic growth. These include an early reopening to the world, a major milestone for international education, and a simplification of immigration settings to ensure New Zealand ...
Proposed immigration changes by the Government fail to guarantee pathways to residency to workers in the types of jobs deemed essential throughout the pandemic, by prioritising high income earners - instead of focusing on the wellbeing of workers and enabling migrants to put down roots. ...
Ehara taku toa i te toa takatahi, engari taku toa he toa takimano – my strength is not mine alone but the strength of many (working together to ensure safe, caring respectful responses). We are striving for change. We want all people in Aotearoa New Zealand thriving; their wellbeing enhanced ...
The Green Party is throwing its support behind the 10,000 allied health workers taking work-to-rule industrial action today because of unfair pay and working conditions. ...
Since the day we came into Government, we’ve worked hard to lift wages and reduce cost pressures facing New Zealanders. But we know the rising cost of living, driven by worldwide inflation and the war in Ukraine, is making things particularly tough right now. That’s why we’ve stepped up our ...
An independent review of New Zealand’s detention regime for asylum seekers has found arbitrary and abusive practices in Aotearoa’s immigration law, policy, and practice. ...
The Government is contributing $100,000 to a Mayoral Relief Fund to help the Levin community following this morning’s tornado, Minister for Emergency Management Kiri Allan says. “My thoughts are with everyone who has been impacted by severe weather events in Levin and across the country. “I know the tornado has ...
The Quintet of Attorneys General have issued the following statement of support for the Prosecutor General of Ukraine and investigations and prosecutions for crimes committed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine: “The Attorneys General of the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand join in ...
Morena tatou katoa. Kua tae mai i runga i te kaupapa o te rā. Thank you all for being here today. Yesterday my colleague, the Minister of Finance Grant Robertson, delivered the Wellbeing Budget 2022 – for a secure future for New Zealand. I’m the Minister of Health, and this was ...
Urgent Budget night legislation to stop major supermarkets blocking competitors from accessing land for new stores has been introduced today, Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs Dr David Clark said. The Commerce (Grocery Sector Covenants) Amendment Bill amends the Commerce Act 1986, banning restrictive covenants on land, and exclusive covenants ...
It is a pleasure to speak to this Budget. The 5th we have had the privilege of delivering, and in no less extraordinary circumstances. Mr Speaker, the business and cycle of Government is, in some ways, no different to life itself. Navigating difficult times, while also making necessary progress. Dealing ...
Budget 2022 provides funding to implement the new resource management system, building on progress made since the reform was announced just over a year ago. The inadequate funding for the implementation of the Resource Management Act in 1992 almost guaranteed its failure. There was a lack of national direction about ...
The Government is substantially increasing the amount of funding for public media to ensure New Zealanders can continue to access quality local content and trusted news. “Our decision to create a new independent and future-focused public media entity is about achieving this objective, and we will support it with a ...
$662.5 million to maintain existing defence capabilities NZDF lower-paid staff will receive a salary increase to help meet cost-of living pressures. Budget 2022 sees significant resources made available for the Defence Force to maintain existing defence capabilities as it looks to the future delivery of these new investments. “Since ...
More than $185 million to help build a resilient cultural sector as it continues to adapt to the challenges coming out of COVID-19. Support cultural sector agencies to continue to offer their important services to New Zealanders. Strengthen support for Māori arts, culture and heritage. The Government is investing in a ...
It is my great pleasure to present New Zealand’s fourth Wellbeing Budget. In each of this Government’s three previous Wellbeing Budgets we have not only considered the performance of our economy and finances, but also the wellbeing of our people, the health of our environment and the strength of our communities. In Budget ...
It is my great pleasure to present New Zealand’s fourth Wellbeing Budget. In each of this Government’s three previous Wellbeing Budgets we have not only considered the performance of our economy and finances, but also the wellbeing of our people, the health of our environment and the strength of our communities. In Budget ...
Four new permanent Coroners to be appointed Seven Coronial Registrar roles and four Clinical Advisor roles are planned to ease workload pressures Budget 2022 delivers a package of investment to improve the coronial system and reduce delays for grieving families and whānau. “Operating funding of $28.5 million over four ...
Establishment of Ministry for Disabled People Progressing the rollout of the Enabling Good Lives approach to Disability Support Services to provide self-determination for disabled people Extra funding for disability support services “Budget 2022 demonstrates the Government’s commitment to deliver change for the disability community with the establishment of a ...
Fairer Equity Funding system to replace school deciles The largest step yet towards Pay Parity in early learning Local support for schools to improve teaching and learning A unified funding system to underpin the Reform of Vocational Education Boost for schools and early learning centres to help with cost ...
$118.4 million for advisory services to support farmers, foresters, growers and whenua Māori owners to accelerate sustainable land use changes and lift productivity $40 million to help transformation in the forestry, wood processing, food and beverage and fisheries sectors $31.6 million to help maintain and lift animal welfare practices across Aotearoa New Zealand A total food and ...
House price caps for First Home Grants increased in many parts of the country House price caps for First Home Loans removed entirely Kāinga Whenua Loan cap will also be increased from $200,000 to $500,000 The Affordable Housing Fund to initially provide support for not-for-profit rental providers Significant additional ...
Child Support rules to be reformed lifting an estimated 6,000 to 14,000 children out of poverty Support for immediate and essential dental care lifted from $300 to $1,000 per year Increased income levels for hardship assistance to extend eligibility Budget 2022 takes further action to reduce child poverty and ...
More support for RNA research through to pilot manufacturing RNA technology platform to be created to facilitate engagement between research and industry partners Researchers and businesses working in the rapidly developing field of RNA technology will benefit from a new research and development platform, funded in Budget 2022. “RNA ...
A new Business Growth Fund to support small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to grow Fully funding the Regional Strategic Partnership Fund to unleash regional economic development opportunities Tourism Innovation Programme to promote sustainable recovery Eight Industry Transformation Plans progressed to work with industries, workers and iwi to transition ...
Budget 2022 further strengthens the economic foundations and wellbeing outcomes for Pacific peoples in Aotearoa, as the recovery from COVID-19 continues. “The priorities we set for Budget 2022 will support the continued delivery of our commitments for Pacific peoples through the Pacific Wellbeing Strategy, a 2020 manifesto commitment for Pacific ...
Boost for Māori economic and employment initiatives. More funding for Māori health and wellbeing initiatives Further support towards growing language, culture and identity initiatives to deliver on our commitment to Te Reo Māori in Education Funding for natural environment and climate change initiatives to help farmers, growers and whenua ...
New hospital funding for Whangārei, Nelson and Hillmorton 280 more classrooms over 40 schools, and money for new kura $349 million for more rolling stock and rail network investment The completion of feasibility studies for a Northland dry dock and a new port in the Manukau Harbour Increased infrastructure ...
$168 million to the Māori Health Authority for direct commissioning of services $20.1 million to support Iwi-Māori Partnership Boards $30 million to support Māori primary and community care providers $39 million for Māori health workforce development Budget 2022 invests in resetting our health system and gives economic security in ...
Biggest-ever increase to Pharmac’s medicines budget Provision for 61 new emergency vehicles including 48 ambulances, along with 248 more paramedics and other frontline staff New emergency helicopter and crew, and replacement of some older choppers $100 million investment in specialist mental health and addiction services 195,000 primary and intermediate aged ...
Landmark reform: new multi-year budgets for better planning and more consistent health services Record ongoing annual funding boost for Health NZ to meet cost pressures and start with a clean slate as it replaces fragmented DHB system ($1.8 billion year one, as well as additional $1.3 billion in year ...
Fuel Excise Duty and Road User Charges cut to be extended for two months Half price public transport extended for a further two months New temporary cost of living payment for people earning up to $70,000 who are not eligible to receive the Winter Energy Payment Estimated 2.1 million New ...
A return to surplus in 2024/2025 Unemployment rate projected to remain at record lows Net debt forecast to peak at 19.9 percent of GDP in 2024, lower than Australia, US, UK and Canada Economic growth to hit 4.2 percent in 2023 and average 2.1 percent over the forecast period A ...
Cost of living payment to cushion impact of inflation for 2.1 million Kiwis Record health investment including biggest ever increase to Pharmac’s medicines budget First allocations from Climate Emergency Response Fund contribute to achieving the goals in the first Emissions Reduction Plan Government actions deliver one of the strongest ...
Budget 2022 will help build a high wage, low emissions economy that provides greater economic security, while providing support to households affected by cost of living pressures. Our economy has come through the COVID-19 shock better than almost anywhere else in the world, but other challenges, both long-term and more ...
Health Minister Andrew Little will represent New Zealand at the first in-person World Health Assembly since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, to be held in Geneva, Switzerland, from Sunday 22 – Wednesday 25 May (New Zealand time). “COVID-19 has affected people all around the world, and health continues to ...
New Zealand is committing to trade only in legally harvested timber with the Forests (Legal Harvest Assurance) Amendment Bill introduced to Parliament today. Under the Bill, timber harvested in New Zealand and overseas, and used in products made here or imported, will have to be verified as being legally harvested. ...
The Government has welcomed the release today of StatsNZ data showing the rate at which New Zealanders died from all causes during the COVID-19 pandemic has been lower than expected. The new StatsNZ figures provide a measure of the overall rate of deaths in New Zealand during the pandemic compared ...
Legislation that will help prevent serious criminal offending at sea, including trafficking of humans, drugs, wildlife and arms, has passed its third reading in Parliament today, Foreign Affairs Nanaia Mahuta announced. “Today is a milestone in allowing us to respond to the increasingly dynamic and complex maritime security environment facing ...
Trade and Export Growth Minister Damien O’Connor is set to travel to Thailand this week to represent New Zealand at the annual APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade (MRT) meeting in Bangkok. “I’m very much looking forward to meeting my trade counterparts at APEC 2022 and building on the achievements we ...
Settlement of the first pay-equity agreement in the health sector is hugely significant, delivering pay rises of thousands of dollars for many hospital administration and clerical workers, Health Minister Andrew Little says. “There is no place in 21st century Aotearoa New Zealand for 1950s attitudes to work predominantly carried out ...
Health Minister Andrew Little opened a new intensive care space for up to 12 ICU-capable beds at Christchurch Hospital today, funded from the Government’s Rapid Hospital Improvement Programme. “I’m pleased to help mark this milestone. This new space will provide additional critical care support for the people of Canterbury and ...
Budget 2022 will continue to deliver on Labour’s commitment to better services and support for mental wellbeing. The upcoming Budget will include a $100-million investment over four years for a specialist mental health and addiction package, including: $27m for community-based crisis services that will deliver a variety of intensive supports ...
Budget 2022 will continue to deliver on Labour’s commitment to better mental wellbeing services and support, with 195,000 primary and intermediate aged children set to benefit from the continuation and expansion of Mana Ake services. “In Budget 2022 Labour will deliver on its manifesto commitment to expand Mana Ake, with ...
Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta has today announced sanctions on Belarusian leaders and defence entities supporting Russia’s actions in Ukraine, as part of the Government’s ongoing response to the war. “The Belarusian government military is enabling the illegal and unacceptable assault on Ukraine’s sovereignty,” Nanaia Mahuta said. “Under the leadership of ...
Just after World War 2, there were incentives to clear forest and bring land into agricultural production. In places, the land had been stripped bare as forests were felled for sheep grazing. Today, you only have to look at the hills around Taihape and see the stumps of a once ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne AAP/Lukas Coch The federal election is on Saturday. Polls close at 6pm local time; that means 6pm AEST in the eastern states, 6:30pm in SA and the ...
Analysis - It was the government's biggest week of the year with the Budget and the Emissions Reduction Plan coming out, and neither was given much of a welcome, Peter Wilson writes. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ataus Samad, Lecturer, Western Sydney University Mick Tsikas/AAP With the election almost upon us, thoughts are more than ever turned to political survival. While getting pre-selected and winning elections are the initial, difficult challenges of a political career, a major ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Chart by Keith Rankin. We know that New Zealand has one of the world’s lowest mortality outcomes, so far, in the Covid19 pandemic. (So has North Korea.) It’s still far too early to access the costs incurred – loss of utility enjoyed by actual and ‘would-have-been’ ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liz Giuffre, Senior Lecturer in Communication, University of Technology Sydney Lillie Eiger/ Sony You’ve probably heard the name Harry Styles. He is the current “real big thing” in popular music. But how did a former boy band star become ...
New Zealand Sotheby’s International Realty managing director Mark Harris is advocating for a stamp duty on foreign buyers of residential property. Following yesterday’s Budget 2022 announcement, Harris believes that a stamp duty would help increase the ...
And how did the people react to the boost in spending announced in this year’s Budget to promote our wellbeing? In some cases by pleading for more; in other cases, by grouching they got nothing. But Budget spending is never enough. Two lots of bleating came from the Human Rights ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra University of Canberra Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan and Emma La Rouche, from the University of Canberra’s Media and Communications team, look at the last week of the campaign as Australians head to the polls. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Hurlimann, Associate Professor in Urban Planning, The University of Melbourne Shutterstock It will be impossible to tackle climate change unless we transform the way we build and plan cities, which are responsible for a staggering 70% of global emissions. ...
Military spending allocated in the 2022 Wellbeing Budget is $6,077,484,000 - an average of more than $116.8 million every week, and a 10.4% increase on actual spending in 2021. [1] This year’s increase illustrates yet again that the government remains ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Tingay, John Curtin Distinguished Professor (Radio Astronomy), Curtin University JIM LO SCALZO/EPA The United States Congress recently held a hearing into US government information pertaining to “unidentified aerial phenomena” (UAPs). The last investigation of this kind happened ...
Bank shareholders, speculators, investors, and ticket clippers will be partying for days over the enormous profits they’ll be expecting following Labour’s budget reveal yesterday. After a 48 percent increase in profits in 2021, banks in particular ...
Budget 2022 has a relatively small amount of new cash allocated to science, research and innovation. This budget comes ahead of what could become a major overhaul of the research, science, and innovation sector in the coming years, with MBIE now ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Curtin, Professor of Politics and Policy, University of Auckland Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern speaks to parliament via video link from COVID isolation during budget day.Getty Images All budgets are about economics and politics, and 2022’s was no different. The Labour ...
Early this Sunday evening there will be a phone alert you can’t ignore – but don’t worry, it’s just a test. This year’s nationwide test of the Emergency Mobile Alert system will take place on Sunday 22 May between 6-7pm It is expected ...
It was announced today that the inaugural Chinese Medicine Council of New Zealand (CMCNZ) has been appointed by the Minister of Health, Hon. Andrew Little. This brings the Chinese medicine profession in under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peggy Kern, Associate professor, The University of Melbourne Shutterstock It’s been a big week and you feel exhausted, and suddenly you find yourself crying at a nice nappy commercial. Or maybe you are struck with a cold or the coronavirus ...
No, we haven’t fully analysed Budget 2022, but we did listen to Finance Minister Grant Robertson’s speech. He took great pride in announcing his fifth Budget invests $5.9 billion a year in net new operating spending, while introducing multi-year funding packages that also draw from Budget 2023 and Budget 2024 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, Epidemiology, Deakin University Victor Grabarczyk/unsplash Dogs have an exceptional sense of smell. We take advantage of this ability in many ways, including by training them to find illicit drugs, dangerous goods and even people. In ...
The Government is using dirty tactics as it pushes through enabling legislation to increase PAYE revenue by 10% under the cover of yesterday’s Budget, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union in response to the Income Insurance Scheme (Enabling ...
RNZ Pacific A total of NZ$196 million has been set aside for Pacific services in Aotearoa New Zealand in this year’s Budget. A big chunk of that — $76 million will go on Pacific health services. Finance Minister Grant Robertson said the cash injection would be used to support Pacific ...
By George Heagney of Stuff A group of students from West Papua, the Melanesian Pacific region in Indonesia, are fearful about their futures in New Zealand after their scholarships were cut off. A group of about 40 students have been studying at different tertiary institutions in New Zealand, but in ...
By Craig McCulloch, RNZ News deputy political editor More than two million New Zealanders will get a one-off $350 sweetener as part of the Budget’s centrepiece $1 billion cost-of-living relief package. The temporary short-term support is counterbalanced by a record $11.1 billion for the health system as the government scraps ...
Asia Pacific Report newsdesk A movement dedicated to peaceful self-determination among indigenous groups in the Pacific is the latest group in Aotearoa to add support for struggling Papuan students caught in Aotearoa New Zealand after an abrupt cancellation of their scholarships. About 70 Papuan students are currently in New Zealand ...
RNZ Pacific The pro-independence coalition parties of Kanaky New Caledonia have selected their candidates for the French Legislative elections next month. Wali Wahetra from the Palika Party is standing in one electoral district, and Gerard Reignier from Union Caledonienne is standing in the other. Speaking with La Premiere, Wahetra explained ...
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Two things from yesterday I thought I would repost as they appeared at the end of the evening thread and are worthy of a wider audience.
Another Guardian article looking at the sorry state of New Zealand’s housing.
Excerpts.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/07/why-auckland-is-leading-the-worlds-housing-market-boom
“Foreign investment in Auckland”
“Investment” is a misnomer. It is exploitation and manipulation that is happening, not investment. Similarly, the “Halo effect” is hardly a halo when it brings homelessness and misery to many.
The homeless need a rental… they need home owned by an “investor”, be it the state or a private individual. How many of the people living in cars or garages do you think could afford to buy a house even if the price was half that of current levels?
Excuse me, Scott, but under current conditions an “investor” is not even a ‘speculator’ (apparently a less desirable term).
Under current conditions, “Profit-Gouger” is the correct term. Please call them what they are – all of them. Until the current conditions are changed to reduce this ridiculous, unproductive profit-gouging in the property sector, our society and economy will continue to become more blighted than ever.
The Guardian need to do their homework.
We need investors in the market. They are the ones that provide rental accommodation. Take the people living in cars. I doubt they would be in a position (in the near to medium term) to buy a house even if house prices halved. What they need is a rental. So 50% were bought by investors. So what. Why is that a bad thing, and if you think it a bad thing then what percentage would be alright… 45%, 40%, 10%? Why?
And then “a significant number of who are Chinese”. Leaving aside the implied racist undertone that a Chinese investor is worse than a Brit or a Canadian or whomever, that statement is simply not true. It is just made up.
In Auckland we know that about 4% are sold to foreign buyers, and about 2% to Chinese buyers in particular. That makes Chinese overseas resident investors about 4% of the total investors in the market (if it is that is half of all homes sold). Since when did 2% or 4% become “a significant number”?
On top of that, some of the Chinese investors will also be sellers. That is not accounted for by a reduction in the figures above. What we know is a kind of maximum, the figures as if no foreign investor ever sells. For all we know the net number of homes owned by overseas investors is actually dropping.
Seems you need to do some homework too Scott….
“In Auckland we know that about 4% are sold to foreign buyers,”
That is false. The correct statement is that about 5% of Auckland property transfers were to foreign tax residents in the period April-June 2016 .
A property transfer is not synonymous with a property sale and a foreign tax resident is not the only type of foreign buyer.
I took my stats from this article in the Herald (if there are more current ones I apologize but by the sound of it that does not substantively alter anything I said):
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11636711
I hear what you’re saying about the tax status, but the problems with it cut both ways. In any event it is the best (only) measure we have at the moment. If the Guardian based their statement on anything else it is pure guesswork / speculation.
I’m not a fan of Winston, but I kinda like his call for a foreign buyers register. It may not solve the definitional issues you elude to, but it would at least be a start at accounting for those that leave the register as well as those that join it (getting us to a net figure).
Sure it alters what you said. You denied the alleged scale of Chinese investment using false statistics. It is not the ‘best’ measure we have, it isn’t a measure at all.
If you’re genuinely interested you can find a copy of the last Linz report by googling this;
prs_property-transfers-tax-residency_report_2016_apr-jun.pdf
Anyone reading it with an open mind should absorb the bit in the intro that says Linz estimate roughly half of property transfers involve a residential sale Despite this their statistics are for all property transfers and not the (estimated) half which are residential sales.
If you’re any good at maths you’d then realise the statistics are worthless for measuring anything except property transfers … you cannot extract any useful information on property sales from that data.
What then do you get your data from? [Chinese] sounding names?
The report you cite says in Auckland 5% of purchasers were foreign tax national and 3% were Chinese tax nationals. Not the 4% and 2% I had from the old stats.
And sure, that is not a complete picture, but neither is ignoring the sellers. That report says nationally 3% of vendors were foreign tax nationals, and 3% of purchasers were. The net change was zero (or negligible at least).
[Leave the racism out, Scott. Only warning. TRP]
Apologies TRP, it was not meant as racist but rather to mock the racism on those that tried to collect their “data” in such a way – I’ll be more careful.
You might want to ask yourself why you persists in talking about buyers & sellers Scott. The Linz report contains no statistics on property sales or property buyers & sellers. It is a record of property transfers.
The second thing.
Solutions to neo-liberalism.
Yesterday evening I challenged CV to come up with some solutions as he has tended to be very critical of everything at the moment.
His response.
CV, I agree with almost everything you say. Controlling the banks is very important.
I am interested to know 2 more of your ideas:
1. how you plan to control multinational companies who, in many ways, are more powerful than nation states.
2. how you plan to create a more diverse media, less controlled by financial interests.
Thanks CV.
I like CV’s ideas too, and good idea to lay down that challenge to say what we want not just what we don’t want.
I also think we need to talk about *how these things could happen. Talking about ideas is important, but on its own it keeps us in a cull de sac. We need to look at how we get there from where we are now.
Well that’s also a very important point weka. And this answer might explain to you a bit of of my contemporary “anti-everything” attitude.
My first step to understanding “how these things could happen”, has been to stop pretending that any of the current political parties or any of their current political policies provides NZ with anything more than a C minus in terms of what the nation actually needs.
This harks back to MS’s question of me last night – which Parliamentary Party should the “collective left” support.
To me the answer is none of them, because all of one’s energy should be going into political activity which talks front and centre 24/7 about the actual answers we need, not into organisations and parties determined to keep presenting diluted watered down shadows of those answers.
You’re being generous. IMO, most of the policies of most political parties are still the absolute fail as all they’re doing is maintaining the same system that has failed badly throughout history.
Which means getting rid of the status quo.
Yes it does. As you have noted for a long time, the status quo is now, to anyone willing to open their eyes, very clearly a very fast drive off a very short pier.
Coalesce around one issue – water. Everybody understands at a visceral level that we need water – good to drink, swim and fish-in water. No other political engagement necessary. Just take that issue and go for it, no holds barred until we get it. Take control of the media process, don’t be deflected by the “but,but what about roads, houses, fur-knuckled MPs …”, and make the story only about water.
Local body elections right now – demand to know what the candidates are going to do about it.
This is a huge opportunity to make big, bold capital-C Change.
water is a good one. A critical part of maintaining a habitat and an ecosystem which can support healthy life.
1. Don’t allow multinational companies to operate here at all – comes in with the banning of offshore ownership really
2. A UBI @$400/week and a state publisher that will support anyone who wants to be a journalist by providing them with the needed resources to investigate and report on whatever they choose to
Slash NZ herd sizes by 75%, reduce international air travel to ten 747 arrivals a week and ten 747 departures a week…
Make moving to Auckland a highly restricted activity requiring a quota limited permit…
Leaving aside for a moment the question of what percentage of the party vote a party proposing to follow CV’s advice could expect to receive, any government that would be willing to grant itself the powers to issue decrees like the above is one that should be kept from power at all costs.
Sometimes people need to do what needs to be done rather than wringing their hands declaiming that nothing can be done.
Just needs a good old dictatorship of the proletariat for a bit, huh? No thanks.
So, we just continue on with the present dictatorship of the corporations?
And a democracy is, by definition, not a dictatorship. And, yes, I think a majority of people would look to limiting tourists and immigration. The people in the communities are seeing the damage that they’re doing while the people in ‘government’ keep telling us it’s all good.
And a final question…..
Would Mana be a suitable party to vote for to get at least some of these outcomes?
Depends on what Mana do between now and the election. There is a case to be made for building a movement over a long period of time so that eventually Mana has more influence. I have my doubts about this because of what happened at the last election, but I would love to see Harawira back in parliament. That’s a Maori voter issue though, Harawira getting back in.
In terms of the wider party vote, the issue is what % has to be gained to get past the gain of the electorate seat. If one votes for this election, rather than long term movement building, then there is a risk of lost votes. Likewise if Harawira doesn’t get TTT. Those are votes that could be better in Labour or the Greens in a tight election.
More extreme weather.
More reporting of that by the corporate media without the context of climate change.
What a sad little country we are becoming under Key.
I loved this description of Key I read in the Guardian.
“New Zealand is an increasingly dysfunctional and bizarre country, which seems to think it’s going to get rich building houses for immigrants. John Key, our PM, is an appalling man; a self-made multimillionaire from his arch skill at gambling with other people’s money in one of the most useless jobs invented by mankind, that of currency speculator, who treats his job as PM like the sort of insouciant hobby a man who needs nothing more in his life might take on as a pleasant interlude before retiring. He suffers from a pathological intellectual rigidity that straight-jackets his and his government’s actions; perish the thought that this man might stoop to intellectual enquiry and rational action.”
Congratulations Paul. The Guardian published the letter you wrote to them did it?
Now you can quote it.
Typical RWNJ – doesn’t like the message and so attacks the messenger.
But I congratulated him? Is that classed as an attack these days?
No, you attacked him using irony and sarcasm.
It was clearly a backhanded congratulation.
Here is another one that was also pretty succinct and on the money: from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/06/new-zealand-needs-migrants-as-some-kiwis-are-lazy-and-on-drugs-says-pm under the name spike91nz:
It is abundantly clear that John Key does not place the concerns of the citizens, or the future wellbeing of the country, as central to his neoliberal politics. He shamelessly pursues a neoliberal agenda, in service of the wealthy, that is even now crumbling upon its global overreach and reductionistic algorithms. He is, and has always exhibited, an envious eye to the powerful and would, it seems, ingratiate himself to them at the expense of the country he has been elected to serve. He imagines a new citizenry of the wealthy elites who can control economic realities and already exhibits distain for those upon whose backs he has ridden to power. Now in power, he is embarrassingly indifferent to the suffering his policies are creating and strikingly unaware that the model he has been sold, and is attempting to sell to New Zealand, is already considered obsolete by the world economic powers he embarrassingly,and so desperately, desires to be considered a member.
My favourite is short but sweet:
“Key is a fuckwit of the highest order, but nowhere near as dense as his cabinet.”
“He suffers from a pathological intellectual rigidity that straight-jackets his and his government’s actions”
Huh, I thought he steals Labour’s ideas, apparently not. Either that or the person that wrote this tosh suffers from a pathological intellectual rigidity that straight-jackets their ability to rationally critique John Key’s Prime Ministerial style?
The description of the outgoing PM that you found is brilliant Paul ty for sharing 😀
the standard is coming through in a very strange format this morning , no boarders and no side bars at all .
Indeed. I fear the css have gone walkabouts.
[you are currently banned. See https://thestandard.org.nz/anti-corbyn-media-bias/#comment-1205982 I suggest when you return that you pick a consistent handle. Using multiple names is likely to get moderator attention, as is continuing to comment when you are banned – weka]
Good morning folks,
If that telco Telcom offers you lightbox with your plan,needn’t bother, if you run on linux.
DIM SPARK. DIM SPARK DIM SPARK
Just a heads up.
No idea what that means but lol DIM SPARK.
Ta weka
edit : ar, were back in format, thanks whoever. 🙂
I’ve always thought looking at their logo that their graphic designer is a fan of Kurt Vonnegut and the CEO has never heard of him.
Yep b waghorn but still readable on my Mac.
Hi Paul,
This reply might appear in the wrong place as the formatting of the Open Mike web page isn’t working for me at the moment.
1) Controlling foreign corporations: transnational corporations have access to some technologies, personnel, contacts, resources and abilities that can be highly useful. We set out to them (the Boards of Directors) very clearly what we want to achieve as a country, and seek strategic corporate partners who can help us reach those goals.
2) A more diverse media: a three pronged attack – on the quality front we leverage up TVNZ and RNZ in a big way. In a diversity front we create structures which support small scale independent media, publishing and blogging. On a corporate media regulatory front – we set clear regulatory standards for what can be called news, current affairs, etc.
Re: Mana. They can support some complementary positions but IMO they are not radical enough nor do they have a good/broad reach across the country.
1. Not really. Or, to be more precise, they’re only useful in the present failed system. Maintaining the present failed system isn’t viable.
So who to vote for?
I’ll vote for somebody probably on the day, but I ain’t supporting any of them coz they ain’t worth it.
Fair call.
I am in agreement with you about a lot.
Root and branch reform needed.
Well that was odd. It looks like there was a problem at AWS cloudfront ??
Anyway, I turned off the CDN, forced some cache reloads and now we appear to have a good front-end again
Just checking that the $25(ish) bill was paid…. They should have been. It is automatic
Yesterday the standard wasn’t working for me from work, just got a blank white page. It happened again this morning, so I shift-F5’d the page and I got a certificate warning from Chrome. I selected to continue to the site.
So it seems like there might be an expired certificate of some sort?
I think that I had a cert that wasn’t fully trusted (trying Lets Encrypt). I replaced it with a multi-domain Comodo one last night. But it looks like that isn’t covering the SSL out to the CDN.
I’ve simply set the site to not use CDN on SSL for now. Higher load on the server…
Looks like some bits of js aren’t working for the comments. That is freaking odd.
Ok, that was just a page cache needed another clear
Yep. $31.87 on the 3rd September.
Ok, I’d class that as just outright weird
Jeremy Corbyn commits to banning fracking.
We, in earthquake- prone Aotearoa, where uncontaminated water is becoming increasingly hard to find, need to do the same: http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/09/07/jeremy-corbyn-pledges-fracking-ban-energy-co-ops-green-labour-agenda
+1 – Fracking and earthquakes go together.
I don’t care about the earthquakes, fracking-induced ones don’t get big and will mostly stop soon after the fracking stops. I care about the contaminated water and the greenhouse gas releases, which will cause problems for generations.
Damage to houses from daily fracking quakes.
Lisa Marriott to Deliver 2016 Bruce Jesson Lecture
Monday 10th October, 6pm
All New Zealanders are Equal, but some are more equal than others
Due to limited seating, REGISTRATION IS ENCOURAGED
Why are those less advantaged in New Zealand society treated differently from those who are in relatively privileged positions? Why are white-collar tax evaders treated differently to welfare fraudsters? This talk will consider circumstances where this occurs, aiming to highlight and challenge issues of equity, privilege, and the construction of crime and criminals in New Zealand.
The presentation will cover:
Investigation, prosecution and sentencing of tax evaders and welfare fraudsters;
The sentencing of serious white-collar financial crime;
The individual treatment of taxpayers and the collective treatment of welfare recipients;
Different treatments of debtors to the Crown (taxpayers, welfare recipients and students);
The introduction of legislation that provides for more punitive treatment for partners of welfare fraudsters than the partners of those engaging in other financial offending; and,
The preferential treatment of the wealthy in the tax system
Monday 10th October, 6pm
Room G36, OGHLecTh, Old Government House (Building 401), University of Auckland
Dr Lisa Marriott is an Associate Professor of Taxation at Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Accounting and Commercial Law. Lisa’s research interests include social justice and inequality, and the behavioural impacts of taxation.
Lisa has publications in a range of refereed journals and is the author of The Politics of Retirement Savings Taxation: A Trans-Tasman Perspective. Her work is interdisciplinary covering disciplines including sociology, political science and public policy. Lisa was awarded a Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Grant to investigate the different treatments of tax evasion and welfare fraud in the New Zealand justice system.
Lisa has worked in the private sector in the United Kingdom and in the public sector in New Zealand. For the past ten years, Lisa has worked in academia.
Due to limited seating, REGISTRATION IS ENCOURAGED
+100 …good to see you back Greywarshark!…
drip drip drip…..
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/texas-regulator-says-ordered-drop-fraud-investigation-trump-university-over-politics
Clinton now just 3.1% ahead of Trump in RCP’s poll of polls.
And only 2.1% ahead of Trump in a four way matchup with the Libertarian and Green candidates.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html
@CV…yup pretty close…I think he will pull it off…she is so unpopular
‘Poll: Nine weeks out, a near even race’ (September 7, 2016)
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/06/_politics-zone-injection/trump-vs-clinton-presidential-polls-election-2016/
…and latest CNN poll a dead heat..even pulling ahead
And there is still a massive amount of information about Clinton’s bad judgement as Sec State still to come out.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/84016795/ag-clears-contract-at-centre-of-political-donations-row
Whether he is right or wrong (hes wrong) why didn’t use the protection that was enabled for mps to say stuff like this without getting sued?
because he didnt say any thing that was illegal.
Seems a pretty interesting way to determine that when he could have said it in parliament instead and not have to bother with all this
But if MPs were to live in fear of whatever some rich doofus might take offence at and decide to sue over, the House would be the only place an MP would ever open their mouths.
On the surface this is appealing, but in the long run it would get in the way of mps doing their damned job.
Well no, I thought the reason mps had the protection of the house was so they could say stuff like this and not have to worry about it
Are you saying that if they say it in the house its not as important or as valid as saying it outside of the house?
No, parliamentary privilege is so they can make explicit allegations and statements of fact in the House. You know, actual controversial shit, rather than requesting that public funds are disseminated in a demonstrably impartial and uncorrupt manner.
He said the timing stinks to high heaven, if I was Earl then I’d be suitably miffed at what Little said and want either proof or an apology because it sounds like Little is saying Earl bribed (or doing something dodgy) his way to a contract
So yeah that sounds like a pretty explicit allegation
lol no it’s not.
The timing did fucking stink. Little was right to demand that the processes be examined to ensure it was nothing more than coincidence that a nat donor’s company gets a contract so soon after a large donation. That’s just stating the bleeding obvious.
An explicit allegation would have been a direct claim of quid pro quo contracts-for-donations arrangement. This claim was never made. What was made was a demand that public money be spent in a demonstrably clean manner.
Anything’s litigable. Whether hagaman gets a penny remains to be seen.
The mechanism is there for Little to say this without getting sued, why not use it?
You’re not asking why he didn’t raise the issue in the House.
You’re asking why he dared raise the issue anywhere else.
Goff, shearer, Twyford and James Shaw all raised different aspects of the affair in the House.
It is difficult to imagine how Little could make a formal written request to the AG for them to investigate solely using the debates with the house.
Basically, the thrust of your argument seems to require that Little make noises in the House, but actually do nothing. ever. For fear that some jerk takes offence and sues.
Hey if he wants to spend his money on lawsuits then good on him
Why?
If little wanted to defend a lawsuit, he’d have made an explicit allegation.
If Hagaman’s just throwing money at a lawsuit in the hope that it inconveniences or intimidates MPs, screw that guy. They’re our representatives, not his lackeys.
So who decides if what someone says is defamatory then?
The courts have the final say.
But that doesn’t mean that most people wouldn’t have a fair idea going into it what the result will be. Case law is public record, after all.
Funnily enough, one of the first things a lawyer told friends of mine when they were considering legal action was to writer out a budget of what they wanted vs what they were willing to spend. It that’s the opening advice for a minor retaining wall dispute, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hagaman received similar advice, and Little. So someone’s basically decided that they can afford the costs regardless of the poor likelihood of outcome.
the only thing that wasnt determined was how vindictive and petty someone who wasnt even criticised would be
and frankly – if thats the bar then we should all cease saying anything, ever
You might think its not a big deal but Earl obviously didn’t like being smeared and so take what he considered appropriate actions
He gave Little ample time to withdraw the comment but Little chose to get some publicity
Why would Little withdraw the comment? The deal was suspicious, did need investigating, and in fact was investigated, albeit not by someone with the authority to actually find any evidence of wrongdoing if it exists. We’re not allowed to state the obvious now, or something?
I’m saying if theres a mechanism where a minister can basically say what they like without repercussion then, unless they’re after some free publicity, why wouldn’t they choose to use it?
Because that would make it the only place that they could ever say anything.
No comments to media. No public speeches. No party conferences. Because who knows what someone with more money than self esteem would take offence at – if demanding the AG do their job is defamatory, everything’s defamatory.
So Little was doing this for everyone and not just trying to garner some free publicity?
lol
Yes, he was acting in his role as a public representative. I know that this might be a difficult concept for you to grasp.
But also he simply asked someone to do their job because he probably has a pretty damned good idea about what is likely to be successfully actionable and what is not. Whereas Hagaman has probably already decided how much he’s prepared to spend out of pure petulance, actual verdict be damned.
The only person in parliament prepared to get things done, everyone else hides behind parliamentary privilege
What a guy
nah.
He didn’t say anything much more extreme than what any other politician has said outside the House. Winston being a prime example.
Little was just unlucky enough to piss off a rich dude with money to burn. Occupational hazard.
how was earl smeared? – only by association as far as i can see
IMO you have to stretch what little said to quite a degree to get to the conclusion that he was talking about the hagmans actions and not the govts.
im not saying its not a big deal – im saying that the case against little is nothing more than spite and an attempt at attrition via legal threat
In your opinion you see it that way but in Earls opinion he obviously saw it differently and I don’t blame him for that either
what exactly did little say that defamed the hagmans?
I suppose if we’re going to go down that road then Little has said nothing that defames them until a judge decides otherwise
thats some mighty back pedaling mate.
cmon – seriously? – you’re going to spend all these comments basically saying the hagmans are right, then bow out now?
Ok when Little said the deal stunk to heaven he was inferring the Hagamans were corrupt because they were giving the government a donation in return for being awarded a contract
No, he was explicitly stating that the coincidence of the two events (donation and contract) was suspicious. His request to the AG was to allay that suspicion.
Suspicion is not a crime, or even defamatory. Otherwise every complaint to the police is defamatory.
Yeah. PR is talking poor quality horseshit, probably because he has a very poor understanding of what the actual law defamation requires. The decision is made on any distortion of facts, not on the damage to reputations – which is what PR in his ignorance clearly expects.
But the facts appear to incontrovertible, so there was no reason for Andrew Little to make them in the house.
The implication by the Hagaman that thsoe facts taken together may have damaged their reputation is completely irrelevant in defamation except at the last stage AFTER a judgement is made. What their lawyers have to show is that Little invented or distorted facts.
However Andrew Little didn’t as far as I can see because he merely stated facts about a political donation and a government contract that were already on the public record. That those facts taken together throw a lot of questions about the morality and use of political donations to tap government funds with this government is rather incidental.
However as far as I can tell Andrew Little only pointed to those facts and asked if there was a cause for public concern. Perfectly legitimate at every level in the circumstances. The Hagamans (and McCully) answered, but hardly (in my view) in any kind of adequate manner because they didn’t dispute either of Little’s two facts.
Basically, if you want to make political donations and don’t want questions about what expectations you or the political party may have of the result of that donation, then it needs to be damn clear that there aren’t any personal expectations. That was in this case, that simply was not clear.
Unless there is something that I don’t know about it, I think that the Hagamans are simply doing some rather stupid legal grandstanding
Tell you what, if Little apologizes (which is him basically admitting he screwed up) and/or this goes to court and Little is found guilty (however you want to legally put it) you apologize to me
If the opposite happens and Little is found not guilty (again however the courts decide) I’ll donate $5 to the Labour party (or apologize to whoever)
Sound good?
“what exactly did little say that defamed the hagamans?”
He said they were chummy with National. That’s a serious insult these days.
lol
Authority without sufficient power to gather evidence finds no evidence of wrongdoing. Fair enough.
As for “saying stuff like this without getting sued”, it seemed pretty reasonable to me. He didn’t make an allegation, he wanted demonstrable evidence that the job of sorting the contract had been done correctly. By Hagaman’s logic, all auditors are defaming the people they audit, simply by doing their job.
Unless every meeting between a national party member and the hagamans was being recorded it would be impossible to find evidence of A Nod And A Wink, which is the standard way of arranging dodgy deals.
Which you’d expect a lawyer like Little is to know that and so should have said it in the house
Little obviously wanted some media attention over this and hes got it, not sure its the type of attention he wanted though
Like Commissions of Enquiry with Terms of Reference which are narrow and useless, it seems the AG is also limited in what she can deliver without sufficient access to information – our watchdogs are being fenced and muzzled methinks.
So why not just say it in the house where you have protection?
Coz he has balls.
and a big johnson if that carpet is anything to go by
well in that case hopefully he also has big pockets because hes going to need them
I am sure he appreciates your everlasting & sincere concern, really.
I’m sure he does as well
You see what it is really is Earlie’s the sorta bloke who likes to dole out money to pollies and he’s the sorta bloke who governments like to chuck money at. Just one of those things.
Well, with all the worrying situations above its lovely to see “the ghastly political Right fight in public and extra satisfying to have Craig and the awful Rankin fighting in public . Its better than a Tom Sharp novel. I wonder what the next revelation will be.
It is great fun for all…except for the kids of course
Williams was dealt to today. He’s such a phony. You can tell from his turns of phrase. Always thought that. Used to show when he was on Jim Mora’s show. No different now.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/84027390/juror-discharged-in-colin-craig-high-court-defamation-trial
So the “independent” inquiry into the Chiefs scandal never interviewed the victim, while the “independent” witnesses were at the same bar earlier they may not have even been present where the incident took place 🙄
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201815292/nz-rugby's-tew-stands-by-independence-of-chiefs-probe
What exactly was the inquiry supposed to do?
considering they used their inhouse lawyer i reckon the purpose is pretty clear
Yep, pre-determined whitewash.
I’m still not sure what they were trying to achieve and then, based on the outcome, what they were going to do
I thought the ‘pre-determined whitewash’ was pretty clear. Their purpose was to clear the players of any wrong doing no matter the facts.
I mean was any player going to get fined or fired or was it a prelude to the police being brought in?
I don’t know but it was definitely a conspiracy
Also well done to Lynn for fixing whatever needed to be fixed
Good to see the first scum bag politician has put their hands up these elections.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/better-business/84035442/nelson-retailers-plan-to-solve-longstanding-stanton-problem
Honesty from our media, was it a mistake or are they finally admitting this is where news is at.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv-radio/83995524/new-breakfast-host-hilary-barry-speaks-out-in-first-interview-since-tv3-resignation
David Bennett seems incapable of distinguishing between peaceful acts of protest in a free society and acts of terrorism. So anyone protesting the visit of a warship, a la 1980s protests, will soon be charged with terrorism?
Yes the distinction will need to be defined in law, which requires some brain work but to ignore the distinction is an act of laziness and/or blind conservative toadyism.
+100…obviously David Bennett is a numpty w..ker who requires “brain work ” and is a “blind conservative toady”
…lets hope he goes out next Election
The Empire vs Kim Dotcom ( entrepreneurs and govt law)
First Amendment violated. Shining a light on government abuse
Episode 962
https://www.rt.com/shows/keiser-report/358125-episode-max-keiser-962/
“Every week Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert look at all the scandal behind the financial news headlines.
In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max and Stacy discuss the mega week in the news: from Apple’s mega tax bill to Trump’s ‘yuuuge’ visit to Mexico. They also discuss Mark Carney’s warning about “dishonest bankers” and their “misconduct” threatening another mega disaster in the financial markets.
In the second half, Max interviews MegaUpload.com founder, Kim Dotcom (@kimdotcom) and his lawyer, Ira Rothken (@rothken), about MegaUpload 2.0 and Bitcache. They also discuss his ongoing trial against the might of the Hollywood copyright industry and the US government.”
I inadvertently saw bits of Hosking and co. tonight. Some ‘prank’ about one of them having birthday. Honestly ..Do they think we are interested in their celebrity birthdays or their silly in house kiddie games? It’s so shallow and trivia driven.I want news stuff or intelligent comment about real issues..
Personally I don’t give a toss about their self obsessed pretensions except it annoys me is that I’m paying for it. And is he still wearing those whatever splattered pants?
I’m starting to sound Morrisyish. Grrr ..go read a book.
Project to help get more funding for RNZ National by going to change.org.
https://www.change.org/p/hon-amy-adams-minister-of-broadcasting-increase-funding-for-radio-new-zealand-in-this-year-s-budget/u/17793332?tk=qcZT8qTBAuoQMPVeL4UyuYKPNVQrqRuSC4wLahqOsOc&utm_source=petition_update&utm_medium=email
Learn to ssl