"For the next four months, a doctor will be available just three days a week at the medical centre, instead of five, and many of those consultations will be by video, not in person."
People will still be able to make appointments to see Reefton’s rural nurse specialist and practice nurse, including on weekends and holidays, and they will be available on-call for emergencies.
I would have thought teleconsults could be done from Chch too, so it's not entirely clear what is happening here.
The problem is that if you have "a" GP they never get time off. They are on call 24 hours of every day and holidays become almost impossible to arrange. It would need more than providing a house to overcome that problem.
At least a doctor who works in a big city Medical Centre can take holidays.
Reported my + covid result yesterday afternoon. My GP called me on my mobile last night to ensure I was ok, stocked up with medication and supplies, and to ensure I knew the signs of significant problems. Offered a loan of a pulse oximeter, they have 15 for loaning out, but my daughter had bought me one (and a body temp sensor) about 6 months back.
I don't think you'd get better service from a GP than that.
I don't understand your question though in terms of your original comment. When you said "a GP to live in that area would be to gift them some land with a decent house on it." I assumed you meant a permanent resident, not a locum. Were you suggesting a house for a locum would be an incentive?
If, on the other hand, you were suggesting that the permanent doctor could get a locum so they could take a holiday I don't see how they could do it. If the DHB can't find locums how is an individual doctor going to do any better?
The DHB can find locums, just not enough in the current system. Who do you think does the three days a week currently? Having a permanent GP would change things a lot, then bring in locums as the GP needs to go on holiday, have breaks etc. It's not an all or nothing.
From the link,
The Reefton clinic serves a population of about 1000 people and is staffed by GP locums supplied by the DHB, who often stay locally. Some have worked in the town for several months at a time.
My late father did a locum for a rural GP in the mid 1950's. He was advised that many of the locals had not yet grasped the principles of a cash economy. He got the GMS benefit for everyone he saw, but the rest was very much "in kind". Fortunately my mother was raised on a farm and her father was a butcher so being confronted with large lumps of recently demised animal or bird (often complete with shotgun pellets) did not worry her. She could also pluck and dress a chicken. We were particularly happy if someone had been over to the coast and we got fresh or smoked fish or crayfish. When there was not produce it was "mow your lawn Doc?" or "clean your car Doc?". We certainly ate well and his tax return was very good that year,
Might work for a couple who are both GPs? But assuming they have accommodation for locums, I was thinking a freehold house would be the kind of incentive for someone to make the move permanently.
"Chair Lisa Neil says the absence of a GP will load more work on to the minimal nursing staff at the medical centre.
“We have a vulnerable elderly community here and the nurses are already under pressure dealing with Covid in the community.”
Cutting services at a time when Reefton people are in the thick of the epidemic and under stress from spiralling living costs is a bad idea, Neil says.
“It’s a real blow. People are reluctant to front up [with depression] as it is, and if you’re dealing with an intimate problem, elderly people especially won’t be comfortable talking to a TV screen and having an extra person in there with them as well.”
The co-founders of Groundswell admit they have not read the three waters legislation they are so vehemently against.
[…]
Groundswell co-founders Laurie Paterson and Bryce McKenzie also said they haven't read the proposed legislation. Paterson says, nonetheless, they're opposed to what's on the table.
Yup, same attitude and response from ‘critics’ of Three Waters roaming free here on TS. They refuse to engage with the proposals, they choose to close off their minds, and they self-justify this by pointing at all sorts of things being thrown around in the MSM and by the opposition parties, i.e. pointing at ‘hidden agendas’, alleged ‘secrecy’ and ‘dishonesty’, ‘stealth’, et cetera. They will never have to find out how good or bad the reforms might be (very bad, of course) and they simply stick their fingers in their ears. But at the end of the day it is always the same as from the outset: prejudice, pure & perfect prejudice. However, never say this to those people because they’ll flip their lid in a fit of incongruence rage.
Co-governance is a thorny one. Take the Canterbury Regional Council (Ngāi Tahu Representation Bill) currently going through parliament. To my mind Ngāi Tahu getting to appoint two representatives to an elected board is undemocratic.
But of course, the same people vigorously race baiting over this co-governance arrangement were more than happy in 2010 when National dumped the elected councillors and replaced them with commissioners to enable the pillaging and theft of Canterbury's water resources on behalf of corporate dairy interests.
So the opposition to Ngāi Tahu getting two representatives isn't so much a principled defense of democracy as being aggrieved the wrong people are getting a nice salary for life.
Personally, I strongly doubt the Ngāi Tahu representatives will prove to be any better guardians of the waters of Canterbury than some entitled cocky whose family arrived on the Charlotte Jane in 1850. The squabble is really over which bunch of entitled twots get to make money out of the commons that is water. To that extent, I oppose co-governance – to my mind, greed is colour and race blind and the only way to really keep an eye on these wannabe rentiers for life and keep them in check is full participatory democracy.
Ngai Tahu are one of (if not) the biggest owners of dairy farms in Canterbury. If any other sector were given 2 seats on ECAN it would be called a Conflict of Interest.
If you’re referring to royalties, I’ve seen arguments these could have advantages over the non-pricing structure currently in place for drinking water. I fail to see, at present, that this is a get-rich-quick scheme for anybody, but greed is not in my nature.
The only consistent prejudice I see on display here is the one that says anything to do with white people is to be discounted, deplored and derided at every opportunity.
According to Witi Ihimaera it is a Maori Universe after all.
It’s amusing that a farmer from Gore has taken a position opposing the 3 Waters reforms.
Gore has a combined sewage / stormwater system. A throwback from the 19th century and rather expensive to fix. It’s also got a shrinking ratepayer (dying) ratepayer base. Without the socialisation of costs that 3 Waters will bring Gore will probably cease to exist as the rates required will be unsustainable.
A combined sewer-stormwater system is a modern septic outrage.
WTF is that Council doing?
Auckland Council's Stormwater team and Watercare only finished separating out flows from the whole of the Ponsonby-Herne Bay-Freemans Bay-Wynyard Quarter catchment last year. Including a 3.3metre diameter stormwater line 600 metres long.
They still have 2 years to go doing the Central Interceptor project that separates most of the previously joined system. That's over $1b of work in that one alone.
Well they’ve got a seriously good Art Gallery… But they are thinking about it and I think they will start in a few years, it’ll probably take 20 years at what they can afford. If there’s a poster child for 3 Water it’s Gore Anywhere else would have been amalgamated three reforms ago
But as you’ve pointed out Auckland isn’t too flash in this regard, and at a much larger and more public scale. This gets hard to fix and most TAs don’t have Aucklands scale and resources
In much / most of Gore and Mataura there is only one pipe for sewage and stormwater. When it rains the lot goes into the shit ponds which discharge into the river. Hasn’t been ideal practice since about 1900.
My reckons is there is no further polling damage 3-Waters can do to the government. The legislation will be implemented without fuss. But it will take over a decade to notice much difference.
The really big difference is the state fresh water regulator enforcing the National Fresh Water Drinking Standards, upon water systems from lazy shitty little farmer-owned councils who didn't give a damn for decades.
My only reservations about three waters is water governance is being consolidated into a nice ripe target for privatisation by a future National government (which will inevitably involve a grubby little cronyist deal with corporate Iwi that'll entrench rentier lifestyles for all those lucky enough to be at the table when the divvy up is done) and a real sadness that it signals a complete and utter failure of local democracy.
I would have preferred the government had spent a few hundred million on a local democracy revival project before declaring them all incompetent.
"My reckons is there is no further polling damage 3-Waters can do to the government."
I respectfully disagree. There are tens of thousands of people invested in privately owned rural schemes (plus the people in the hundred or so rural council owned schemes) who will suddenly find the schemes they have paid for they no longer control. There is the ongoing and deep set resentment across local government towards central government at the perceived loss of control over ratepayers assets. and at the way the process has been undertaken. And then there's the commitment of both National and Act to overturn the entire structure.
"But it will take over a decade to notice much difference."
Certainly there will be no benefit before the next election, and that is a huge problem, because over the next year the media will be full of reports of the cost of establishing the entities. This is a big play by Labour, and it will be interesting to see how the politics plays out.
"I'm sure there are indeed several thousand on private water systems, but seriously Labour never had them to start with."
I have a friend who lives on a lifestyle block near Masterton. He's one of the many rural people who is part of a private scheme, and he voted for Labour in Wairarapa in 2020, along with significant others that saw the seat go red. He's one of many that will vote blue in 2023 due significantly because of 3Waters. That will play out across provincial NZ, IMHO.
When I was in a private developers scheme, I heaved a sigh of relief when the local council took over that ongoing liability, even though it cost a considerable sum at the time, to get the scheme connected to the public one.
Many of the smaller council's in particular, should be relieved that the costs will now be shared over a much wider area.
Economies of scale set against increased bureaucracy, larger and disparate areas of activity, promised improvement of both delivery and standard and thousands more employed.
Simply that the cost and efficiency of the water and waste water plants per user, improved, when going from about a hundred houses, in the private scheme, to being shared amongst over 8000.
Originally there was no water or sewage plant, except for the development.
Which of course was paid for by buyers, including myself, in the subdivision.
We would have had to pay all the ongoing costs ourselves of the rather expensive to run water and wastewater scheme split amongst a hundred households.
Noting that unit costs drop as plant gets bigger.
The rest of the town was on tank and septic tank.
Later the rest of the town was reticulated to the extended private scheme. Both water and wastewater supply.
Further down the track this was inadequate, as the town grew, and a new scheme was built. Every section paid a levy for the new scheme and ongoing running costs became part of rates.
Much cheaper per household than the original scheme. And saving a nice bit of coast from leaking septic tanks.
You are using terms you apparently dont understand….yes your (future) personal expense was reduced because it was met by a larger group whos future expense was increased…this is contrary to both what is promised by 3 Waters and economy of scale.
Rates which are less than the ongoing costs per household, if the scheme wasn't done.
Originally non reticulated households, also benifited from the initial work and plant built and paid for by the houses in the private scheme, so if there was any cross subsidy, it was from those of us who paid for the private scheme at the start.
Everyone gained from the new scheme. At reduced ongoing cost per household.
@pat, we had a similar situation in our rural community.
However, in this case the local government solution was to require the developer to provide a considerably bigger upgrade for wastewater treatment than his resource consent number of properties warranted.
Once in place, other rural land was rezoned, and the council charged those developments to connect to the now upgraded system.
Other rural land in the area with Grade I soil, has followed with residential zoning, partly justified by the access to the waste water system which retains excess capacity.
A particularly pernicious way of rezoning rural land. In this case there are other factors that make this rezoning not as bad a full greenfields development but it does indicate the lack of transparency.
I have no idea what is grade 1 soil but guess it is productive(?)
However designated land use is imo likely the only effective way of addressing the multitude of issues we face though it would need to be considered in a holistic manner…and it would be deeply unpopular.
When it comes to water infrastructure the problems and solutions remain the same regardless of governance form, management style or political persuasion.
@pat. Yes, Class I soils are productive. There are/were issues with the soil classifications maps that could be up to 5km out in some places. That might have been resolved.
However, the rural land here was not only zoned Class I, it was historically and currently used for food production.
The alternate reasons why this development is not as bad as it could be. There is a geological (topographical) limit to residential expansion, where the sprawl is contained. The community has a long history – pre treaty, and so is well serviced in terms of services and recreational community assets that have built up over time. There is remnants of a train station, with a working rail line. If passenger trains were reinstated to this line, residents would have a viable alternative to car travel.
In my opinion, this is a significantly different situation to other rural developments that have been permitted without connection to existing communities or public transport links.
Many rural communities have historically survived and thrived without the 'benefit' of the latest infrastructure, however the environment (in both senses) has changed….and not for the better.
As one commenter noted a few days ago our population is widely dispersed and many of our communities small and distant from large scale infrastructure removing the option of consolidation….all of these will still require access to potable water, and to meet the standards for waste….and no one has yet addressed the question of contamination of water supplies be it nitrates, PFOS or whatever other contamination we discover that is both extremely difficult and expensive to remove and is historical.
Much has yet to be determined…there are areas where the new entities will have an impact on private schemes and there is also concurrent reform with Taumata Arowai
Gee I wouldn’t go that far. We know enough to determine the scheme is inferior to alternatives.
But look I’ll be generous and save you some time. When you said “Private schemes are outside the Three Waters reforms” you obviously weren’t aware of this:
Acquisition and Vesting of Private 3-waters Schemes Policy
2.2.1 PRIVATE/SMALL DRINKING WATER SCHEME OPERATORS CAN EXPECT TO SEE:
· Increased and immediate investment requirement in backflow prevention.
· Increased monitoring of water schemes and treatment to meet DWSNZ.
· Requirement to develop and administer a drinking water safety plan and a source water risk management plan (catchment).
· Increased costs of source water quality monitoring and testing.
· Increased personal liability to directors with heavy fines for incidences, up to and including imprisonment.
2.2.2 PRIVATE/SMALL WASTEWATER AND STORMWATER SCHEME OPERATORS CAN EXPECT NEW LAWS EMPOWERING TAUMATA AROWAI TO:
· Compile information about wastewater and stormwater networks in a national public database:
· Set environmental performance measures, which wastewater and stormwater operators will have to report against annually:
· Publish an annual report on the environmental performance of wastewater and stormwater networks and their compliance with applicable regulatory requirements (such as resource consents): · Identify and promote national good practice for the design and management of wastewater and stormwater networks.
I don't know how you managed to make the html in that comment so complicated, but I've stripped it out and made it more readable. It's good practice to put links in the clear especially if they are to PDFs. People need to see what they are clicking on.
I don’t have time to rebut this properly. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, you have not clarified anything, not cleared up the confusion but only added to it.
Clearly, you have an anti-Three Waters Reforms agenda. You quote some stuff to prove something but it isn’t clear what that is except to bolster your agenda of negativity.
Just briefly, from your linked PDF:
3-waters Reform – Governance, administration and operation of Council 3-waters networks are likely to be transferred to new regional entities from 1 July 2024 (subject to legislation).
…
Until the full enactment of 3-waters reforms underway, Council is the operational and controlling authority responsible for the supply, treatment, reticulation/conveyance and discharge of public 3-waters services (excluding private networks) within the District. [my italics]
Your PDF also states:
Check the Department of Internal Affairs Three Water Review1 for updates.
Which means that you can go there and find out that private schemes are outside the Three Waters reform, as I correctly stated before. Unless you can find more recent info that contradicts this, e.g. because Government has done a U-turn.
So you are given a list of requirements proposed for private schemes and you double down! Your comment about private schemes being “outside the Three Waters reforms” was incorrect.
On the wider issue of 3Waters, I suggest you read the article by Sandra Coney in the Herald about the Waitakete Ranges.
[Link required. Don’t expect others to do the donkey work for you. And you have to explain why and how the NZH article is relevant to the discussion thread about Three Waters Reform and private schemes, not just point to it and say ‘read it’ – Incognito]
I suggest that when you make a suggestion for somebody to read something you include a link and spell names correctly. And if it is in the NZH then it better be not behind the pay-wall or it could be conceived as a troll comment by you – the onus is on you to avoid wasting other people’s time and not put them on wild goose chases through Google, the internet, and then find a brick wall and a hard stop when the article is finally found. I hope for your sake that this is not the case because you will receive a Mod note soon.
Since you seem be adamant on heaping confusion on the matter at hand rather than helping to clarify things I’ve made some time to do some digging.
Can you handle a one-page Summary Fact Sheet on Three Waters Reform – Rural water supplies? Sure you can; you handled the 18-page QLDC policy no sweat.
Under the reforms, only council-owned assets necessary for the delivery of drinking water, wastewater or stormwater services will be transferred to the new water service delivery entities. Privately owned supplies or people who supply their own water for their house will not be impacted.
There are a range of existing service delivery arrangements between councils and community/rural schemes. These will be worked through with all parties during the transition period. This will ensure services continue with appropriate agreements in place with the new entities – for example, private community operated services that require technical assistance.
And
Only council-owned assets necessary for the delivery of three waters services will be transferred to the new entities. Privately owned schemes and supplies will not be transferred.
And
The recently passed Water Services Act will require all drinking water suppliers, other than domestic self-suppliers, to provide safe drinking water and meet drinking water standards. This is to ensure all communities receive safe drinking water, no matter where they live or who supplies this service.
Private drinking water suppliers currently registered under the Health Act will have a year to comply under the Water Services Bill – this includes all public supplies and some large networked rural supplies. Suppliers that are not currently registered under the Health Act will have four years to register with Taumata Arowai (the new water regulator); and seven years to comply.
The NZH article is relevant to the wider discussion about 3Waters and it’s merits. It’s worth purchasing a copy for.
[So, still no link to the NZH article and still no explanation why and how it is relevant to the discussion here. And now you suggest I and other readers here should pay and purchase a copy!? Because it’s worth it, in your opinion, without explaining why and how!?
The link I requested was to the NZH article. But you know that.
However, you provided the same link to the QLDC policy draft again, for the third time, after extensively and selectively quoting irrelevant stuff. I referred to it in my reply @ 11 June 2022 at 2:15 pm and I’ve quoted from it myself. But you know that.
It is unclear and ambiguous to refer to the “original post” without being more specific about which exact comment you mean. When I refer to the OP I refer to the blog/article/piece written by the Author, not to the beginning of a discussion thread or sub-thread. In any case, it is not clear what you’re referring to and this is OM!?
So, you’re a disingenuous troll here, baiting, diverting, obfuscating and you’re wasting Moderator time. Take a week off – Incognito]
"Can you handle a one-page Summary Fact Sheet on Three Waters Reform – Rural water supplies? "
And then you go on to provide a link about transfer of ownership. Your claim was "Private schemes are outside the Three Waters reforms." and yet your own reference states:
"Private drinking water suppliers currently registered under the Health Act will have a year to comply under the Water Services Bill – this includes all public supplies and some large networked rural supplies."
If the scheme has to comply with any new regulations under 3Waters, it is simply false to suggest the scheme is ‘outside’ of the reforms.
And in anticipation that you will try to claim your comment was about 'ownership', the comment you were replying to when you made your claim, and my subsequent comments, have referred to 'control' not 'ownership'.
Nope, neither control nor ownership are transferred out of and away from private schemes. You’re confusing compliance with the new regulations and regulatory framework with loss of control, which is bot inaccurate and incorrect and amounts to fearmongering. The same fearmongering and propaganda as we might expect from some rural quarters with hysterical outburst and frankly ridiculous claims such as "They're stealing our water!", FFS. https://www.ruralnewsgroup.co.nz/rural-news/rural-general-news/they-re-stealing-our-water
To have something stolen from you, you have to own it in the first place. Some rural folk seem to think that they own the commons and because they have been free to use it and waste it they own it, for all intents & purposes. Now, who are the real thieves here?
By all accounts you’re quite intelligent, yet you don’t do anything to help clearing up confusion. Rather, you antagonise and obfuscate. The most obvious conclusion is that you have a deliberate agenda in stalling Three Waters Reform as much as possible and ideally make it fail.
The Three Waters Reforms are complex. This has meant there is some confusion about the reform proposals. The following slides discuss some common misconceptions or myths about the three waters service delivery reforms.
Question: Will the Three Waters Reforms take private water supplies / take back water allocations
Answer: No. The Three Waters Reforms aim to reform council-owned services only. This discussion is not about taking over operation of privately-owned supplies. However, the Government is working with a Rural Supplies Technical Working Group to understand how the proposed entities may support private supplies who currently receive assistance from councils.
The proposed entities will continue to operate within the resource management system – the Three Waters Reforms will not alter resource consents, allocations, or address ownership of freshwater. This is subject to work of the Ministry for the Environment.
I cannot make it any clearer for you or for anybody else. To draw conclusions that are in direct contradiction with the information provided is a sure sign of being disingenuous and not commenting & debating here in good faith. This is the very strong impression you create time after time.
There is a full on white panic going on in certain parts of the country right now, assiduously dog whistled by an army of GOP adjacent racists and/or culture warriors like Laurie Paterson and in the MSM by an army of right wing opinionistas.
That this is a race based backlash can be discerned from the targets – co-governance, smearing Mahuta and attacking Poto Williams, racist fear mongering over three waters, the vigorously pumped conspiracy theories from He Puapua to white paranoia about rigging elections (see National MP David Bennett) to far out conspiracy theories like the great replacement theory which is increasingly being mainstreamed on the NZ right and popping up in comments sections of the likes of the NZ Herald.
But it's not about race, it's about privatisation….
The council-iwi working group, on which Smith was a member, had recommended an entrenched clause to stop the water assets' privatisation. The sale or transfer of even a single pipe would require the agreement of at least 75 percent of all MPs.
[…]
Infrastructure Minister Grant Robertson called on opposition parties to "step up" if they believed in public ownership. "We've heard certainly from the National Party that they've been throughout this process concerned about the loss of ownership in communities," he said. "Now they can step up and say 'we will agree that these assets won't be sold'."
But it's understood the National Party did not agree to support the entrenched clause, protecting against privatisation – it is ironic for Jason Smith that it is the party he has just joined that has effectively blocked the requirement for a super-majority.
Got it in one Sanctuary. And its percolating through centrist communities too. If you confront them – as I have with a few family members – they descend into fits of outrage because it's not racism. Oh yeah.
I have been following stories on the trip to England by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. There it is again. Racism in all its glory. Hatred and vitriol abounded in subtle and less subtle guises. They are dammed if they do and damned if they don't. I can't even begin to imagine the uproar if it had been their little boy, Archie who played up on the balcony and elsewhere.
It will be understandable if they never return to racist Britain.
It will be understandable if they never return to racist Britain.
I'm sure Britain will be ecstatic.
Meanwhile they're living in considerably-more-racist USA.
Really, you care what the H&M roadshow says or does? Talk about the pinnacle of irrelevance. At least the R Family (privileged though they may be) actually work [truly, you couldn't pay me to do their jobs, be in that goldfish bowl, and live a life in the public eye]
I had sympathy for H&M when they wanted to ditch it all; but the sympathy waned rapidly when it was apparent that they actually wanted to live like A-list celebrities, and were perfectly prepared to sacrifice their precious privacy at the altar of their new god, Netflix.
Actually I was picking up on Sanctuary @3.4 and talking about racism Belladonna. The example I gave is just the latest.
Don't care what you may think I care or don't care about, or for that matter what you may care or not care about. Don't do Netflix and don't follow the pair's antics in the US so don't know what you're talking about. And just so as you get the message I don't care either. 😈
I care about racism and other forms of destructive prejudice. I don't care about the circumstance or past mistakes of the individual/individuals who happen to be the targets.
A less judgemental approach to commenters based on… zero knowledge of their backgrounds or the extent of their "research" endeavours into matters that happen to be of interest to them would be helpful. You might find the favour being returned.
Don't care what you may think I care or don't care about, or for that matter what you may care or not care about. Don't do Netflix and don't follow the pair's antics in the US so don't know what you're talking about. And just so as you get the message I don't care either.
It's pretty obvious that you've done little or no research.
And I suggest a mirror, when you're talking about "less judgemental approach"
Apart from the people who drafted it, I doubt even the minister has read the whole thing. It would be more to the point to ask if they'd read the summary of the Bill and the discussion document.
the National Party is still perceived by New Zealanders as most capable of managing 4 of the top-5 issues, a significant shift compared to June 2021, when Labour was seen as most capable of managing 19 of the 20 issues.
The top five issues are:
1. Inflation/cost of living.
2. Housing/price of housing.
3. Healthcare/hospitals.
4. Petrol prices/fuel.
5. Crime/law and order.
National should be delighted with the attention Labour is giving 3 Waters.
I don't think they care about reelection at this point. I think the cabinet of mediocrity is simply hoping it gets as many of its social engineering reforms through by mid 2023 as possible.
They are doubling and trippling down on everything that makes them unpopular and have abandoned anything remotely popular.
People voted labour because they thought they might do something about unaffordable housing, unaffordable rents, living costs, mental health, welfare ,health, tax reforms and in 2017 Jacinda even said she supported drug reform.
Instead all those problems are worse and labour is worrying about Geoffrey Palmer esque pie in the sky constitutional reforms and social engineering.
Tens of thousands wait on social housing lists and labour won't increase the percentage of social housing in total supply better to just copy national and throw them in costly motels rather than build state housing which is revenue asset for the govt but nevermind.
Private Rentals are impossible to find but theres a hundred thousand empty houses in NZ the govt just shrugs. Instead of developing land and building houses we give land to developers to sell extremely overpriced two bedroom boxes that sit empty.
Cost of living is out of control and our supermarket duopoly greed is hurting our people and a war with them would be extremely popular, the govt spends months saying it'll do something major doesn't even do the bare minimum. Another failed opportunity
Instead of spending loads on training new nurses and doctors for free we spend loads on centralizing healthcare bureaucracy. While dying people sit in beds in our ers.
Drops a CGT as soon as they start polling highly after March 15. wasted opportunity
Pm whose popularity, like way Trudeau would have gotten weed reform Says she supports drug reform in 2017, the party doesn't wrote a coherent drug policy, pm refuses to say she supports drug reform Incase it costs her a single vote but will support euthanasia, the result is pretty much 50/50 and immediately govt rules out any reform desire weed reform being popular with half the country. Another cynical wasted opportunity and if you look at the weed industries around the world, one that is leaving NZ behind. Failure to get any drug reform from this govt is shameful.
Instead of things on housing,cost of living , health, things people actually vote labour for we get hate speech laws, woke extremists running an anti terrorist unit, 3 waters, centralization, more hotels, a broadcast merger, co-govt constitutional reforms and a few crumbs like wage rises, benefit rises, bland climate reforms, weak workers rights reforms and more and more unaffordable empty box apartments.
Yippie.
Then there's the off touted COVID response , the one praised for not clogging up our healthcare system…. Except…… ambulances are so busy they aren't taking calls heart attacks have 1/4 survival rate, hospitals are chocker full and ambos are just dropping patients to emergency bay and picking which ones get treated and which ones don't…. Boy seems like we just postponed the health crisis by two years and didn't do anything with the two extra years to increase health care capacity.
Thank God for vaccinations because otherwise we really would be upshit creek. Which is a credit to the govt but not increasing capacity is a discredit.
In previous elections labour used to say we'd love to do this or that if only we had a majority. Now we know they what they will do with a majority. Constitutional reforms rather than economic or housing reforms. Yay!
I hope labour wins a third term.
Not because I think they'll do anything, they ruled out anything that would get people excited, I hope labour wins a third term cos national and act would be horrifically bad for many of my friends and families living standards. Labour just won't make it much worse.
But if labour loses I hope it's a nat/nzf /act govt or nat/Maori/act govt cos those two centerist parties would stop act and national reeking too much ruthanasia on the poor.
But if labour loses I hope it's a nat/nzf /act govt or nat/Maori/act govt cos those two centerist parties would stop act and national reeking too much ruthanasia on the poor.
Hope you're right, remembering that Richarsdon was a National party MP, finding her natural home (the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers NZ party, founded by Douglas and Quigley), only after she departed Parliament.
Yes Ross, it is always easier to sit on one side throwing rocks into the kitchen.
Being able to produce change in an unstable world is harder. You did not mention 3 huge problems. Covid War Climate Change.
All we hear from National is "We could do it better and cheaper"
Righto!! Why do you think that would be? You new boss says "He would do the same"
"He would spend the same" So what exactly would change….. Tax cuts?? How did that work for 90% of us???
Oh I gedditt!! You would have a Big Daddy in charge.!! Not a "Girl"
Guess what?? He needs to do more homework. This is not a company There is a big bad world out there having an effect on us. We can't ignore that for political convenience. Most countries are struggling.
Don't forget when Labour were in opposition, they threw plenty of rocks and were going to fix the homeless issue, child poverty etc. and Kiwi build 10k houses a year, fix the state house wait list and hospital wait lists. All oppositions can promise the world as they don't have to deliver.
How is that going now that they have been in government for nearly five years?
"European Parliament lawmakers on Wednesday voted to support an effective EU ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035, rejecting attempts to weaken the proposal to speed Europe's shift to electric vehicles."
Germany getting people out of their cars. But they’ve got a proper train set.
. Millions of Germans are expected to take advantage of a summer of cheaper travel from next month under government plans to boost public transport use and give financial relief to consumers facing a cost of living crisis.
A €9-a-month ticket scheme is to be introduced from 1 June allowing travel on all modes of city and regional transport. The ticket will apply nationwide and will be available for three months until the end of August.
[…]
The cost of the ticket is a fraction of the normal cost of travel, amounting to around a sixth of the price of the cheapest monthly ticket available for Berlin’s central zones.
Is everyone comfortable that around 20 people are dieing from Covid 19 related illness each day? That' over 100 deaths per week and the way its going looks odds for over 5,000 by years end. The business lobby won and the old, infirm and (probably) poor lost. I'll still vote Labour but when backbone was needed they didn't stand up for their people – it's a sore point for me and whilst I think that overall Covid was handled really well if we get to the next election with 10,000 dead from Covid it will be hard to use the handling of the pandemic as a reason to vote Labour. .
I don't think anyone is "comfortable about it". Certainly still very concerned about the vulnerable around me.
Once omicron was in the country, and everyone that could, or would be, was vaccinated, it is hard to say what else could be done. It is doubtful if enough people would have supported further lockdowns to make them effective. As we could see at the end of the last Auckland lockdown.
Even China's draconian lockdowns are leaking. With pretty dire results in areas with around 60% vaccination rates.
Keeping covid out until we had 95% vaccinated, has saved thousands of lives, compared with countries that didn't reach those levels before opening up.
Interesting interview Jamie McKay had with soil scientist, Doug Edmeades. Some main points:
1- Farmers need to realise urea isn't the best source of nitrogen, clover pasture is. Emades believes growing good clover pasture has become a lost art.
Yeah, but urea gets a hell of a fast result even though much is lost into the atmosphere. And…I hate clover pasture, as anyone who has lifted and stacked clover hay bales will attest to.
2- Soil does not produce nutrients, so fertiliser is a must. In the 80s when many farmers cut back on fertiliser, those who continued fertilising came out of the then farming slump in a much better position. When you use less fertiliser you need to reduce your stock numbers.
3- Farmers use too much phosphate. That's a problem in NZ. I used bat guano for a few years. The phosphate reading when taken was off the charts. In alternative medicine, excessive phosphate is considered a cause for cancer and other diseases.
Now for the contentious issue – Methane .
Quote:
''Yes, ruminants produce CH4. Yes it is a greenhouse gas. Yes it may be possible to come up with interventions to reduce emissions from the animal.
BUT! Let me explain.
Methane is short-lived in the atmosphere. It hangs around for about 10 years before it is converted to CO2. For every unit of carbon the animal emits as CH4 it must ingest the same amount of carbon from its plant-based feed source, which, remember, comes initially from the CO2 in the atmosphere.
From the animals perspective every bit of carbon it emits as methane it mopped up as carbon in its feed. The animal is both the source of the carbon in methane and it is also the sink for the equivalent amount of carbon in CO2. In this sense the carbon-methane cycle: methane-to-CO2-to-forage-plants-to-animals-to-methane, is a closed cycle.''
Dr Doug Edmeades, MscHons, ONZM (Services to Agriculture), is an independent soil scientist based in Hamilton. He welcomes feedback – doug.edmeades@agknowledge.co.nz
In Vino has replied yesterday to some of these similar points:
''Blade – I read that crap in the local café. Utter baloney – the guy lies about methane, claims a closed system when much of his 'disappearing methane' converts to carbon dioxide, and peddles a load of wishful garbage.
He claims that 'methane is gone in ten years.' If I remember correctly, that approximate figure is its half-life. And what is the point if farmers are replenishing it with a new full amount every year? No mention of methane being up to 60 times worse that CO2 as a heat-retaining gas.''
One-eyed, wishful drivel.
My point here is, and has always been, we don't see enough Edmeades in the media because they have issues with some mainstream narratives on climate change.
Edmeades is a major drag on progress here in New Zealand.
You're such a wag, Blade, waving your ineptly-baited hooks around here on TS. You do get nibbles, but to those watching, you're a subtle as, well, Edmeades himself.
The methane excuse is utter nonsense. The hydroxyl argument is a red herring (note the continued fishing theme). In Vino said,
"One-eyed, wishful drivel."
Pretty fair comment, that.
This, from you:
"I hate clover pasture, as anyone who has lifted and stacked clover hay bales will attest to."
Classic, though poorly expressed, trolling clap-trap. Red meat stuff. Carelessly expressed though – "anyone who has lifted and stacked clover hay bales" won't in fact, attest that you hate clover pasture.
You might like to drop Edmeades a line yourself:-) and ask him why, if livestock methane is carbon-neutral and nothing to worry about, are farmers and their representatives etc. gleefully accepting the millions of dollars from the Government to research … methane reduction?
I don't usually respond to you, Robert, because I consider you a soundbite karen. But as you have extended yourself let's have looksee.
''Edmeades is a major drag on progress here in New Zealand.''
Based on what? Your ideology?
''You're such a wag, Blade, waving your ineptly-baited hooks around here on TS. You do get nibbles, but to those watching, you're a subtle as, well, Edmeades himself.''
I put this up for debate because it is current in the media; it stops the blog becoming an echo chamber and as I'm continually considered nuts because I don't believe in manmade climate change shouldn't I be able to defend myself? Hooks and nibbles is more to do with your mind set.
"I hate clover pasture, as anyone who has lifted and stacked clover hay bales will attest to." Classic, though poorly expressed, trolling clap-trap.
In fact it was side comment as to the extreme weight of clover bales. Some can come in at 70-80kgs wet. I can’t see you hacking that work, Robert. Again your unusual mind set on display.
''Red meat stuff.''
We can't have that can we, Robert. Although the world loves our pasture fed red meat.
''You might like to drop Edmeades a line yourself:-) ''
Why don't you drop him a line? When you don't get a reply you may like to ask yourself why?
Sorry, Blade, but you have maxed out again. I think I did a lot more hay-bale lifting that you ever did. Through all my Uni years it was my summer holiday job. 3 of us running one truck plus a loader (good boss back then – we shared driving once every 3 loads of 120 bales, but at the barn we all had to stack like hell..
My one little concession to capitalism: we were paid per bale moved. We were efficient. The few times we saw guys being paid by the hour, they were so slow that we felt nothing but contempt.
So yes – reward productivity.
Clover bales were lovely when properly dried. They hurt your thighs much less! Heavier when wet, and more likely to cook and catch alight if stacked in a barn too wet.
I picked up bales each summer starting 1965 til 1970. I had hoped it would make me a muscleman, but it just made me skinny and wiry with little, bumpy arm muscles. And it made me very fit, but I have slowly worked that off.
Edmeades as I see it does not prove a closed system for farming. His argument that farms absorb as much carbon dioxide as they produce does not counter the carbon dioxide produced as the methane magically disappears. Nor does he seem bothered about the seriously more damaging effect of methane itself.
We need to reduce methane urgently, not rabbit on about theoretically closed systems.. Edmeades appears to be aiding an interested status quo party to my mind.
Great story. I only did two seasons. And yes, I, like you, only put on arm muscle. But I was lean and mean…and bloody fit. I also saw 3 people walk off the job because they couldn't hack it. Lord knows how many would walk off the job nowadays.
Only just got through my first week. Several guys dropped out after a day or so.. Including a police trainee.
Maybe we were still under the effects that the Great Depression had on our parents… There are still plenty of good young guys (Covid has just forced my retirement from Secondary School Relief Teaching) and there are also heaps of tough-looking young guys that would not hack it.
More worrying – there are also disaffected young guys who would put that kind of effort in for a gang, but not for a standard job.
Low wage economy makes hard work a sucker's game nowadays?
And how did we end up with an unproductive, low-wage economy?
I blame Roger Douglas. I heard him say on the radio in early days that we must do all his reforms, but NOT become a low-wage economy.
Every reform he did weakened unions, and promoted a low-wage economy.
A reply will either show him to be incompetent, or it will as Earle Kirton was fond of saying, ''be good night nurse'' for some experts on this thread.
I'm teaching you nothing. Incognito laid down the kaupapa and suggested we follow it. That's what I'm doing and from my perspective KJT isn't.
You also called me a troll. You will need to back that up and show me where I'm trolling. And no, posting articles that aren't kosher from a Leftie perspective is not trolling in my opinion.
The good news for you is if I'm not booted off before hand , I will be gone for good after the next election. This will be no place for a Rightie to ply his trade. So grit ya teeth. Time will fly… and before you know it Luxon will be pontificating on the podium about how National is going to make NZ great again.
This is not the case with methane. The methane-carbon mop is built in. The animal is both the source and the sink – you cannot have one without the other. The animal is CH₄-carbon neutral.
Seems Dr Edmeades' ONZM award (2013) for Services to Agriculture was well-earned.
Increase in atmospheric methane set another record during 2021
[7 April 2022]
NOAA’s preliminary analysis showed the annual increase in atmospheric methane during 2021 was 17 parts per billion (ppb), the largest annual increase recorded since systematic measurements began in 1983. The increase during 2020 was 15.3 ppb. Atmospheric methane levels averaged 1,895.7 ppb during 2021, or around 162% greater than pre-industrial levels. From NOAA’s observations, scientists estimate global methane emissions in 2021 are 15% higher than the 1984-2006 period.
How necessary and feasible are reductions of methane emissions from livestock to support stringent temperature goals? [27 Sept 2021]
Most fundamentally though, none of the mitigation pathways and options discussed in our study will come to pass without targeted policies to address greenhouse gas emissions, reduce the global demand for emissions-intensive livestock products and provide for transitions of those most affected by the necessary transformative changes. The significant potential for the reduction of livestock CH₄ emissions can only be realized if agriculture, and livestock systems in particular, become part of mainstream climate policies, while recognizing their unique and multiple interacting social, cultural and environmental functions.
And what Robert Guyton wrote @8.1. Sand still not bothering you? What’s your secret?
We may have too many cattle beasts but they are not the main cause of increasing atmospheric methane, indeed those studying it are struggling to account for it.
There is a real complex ecosystem there,which is difficult to model,With coastal wetlands they do not produce so much CH4 due to SO2 from the sea (acid rain) from algae.
Poission is right. Wetlands will be the saving of us (those of us who live in regions where wetlands were, pre-agriculture, vast wetlands – put them back)!!
Not ban wetlands; fens, bogs, swamps and mires – make more of them!!
Many more. The benefits are enormous! Food production from wetlands is something that was once well known, but has been forgotten, mainly, til now. Eels, crayfish, mussels and more, not counting plants (watercress etc.
Best thing though, the filtering, cleansing, water-slowing effects of wetlands. Uncounted savings to all regions, subject to flooding.
With a 500b$ foreign liability,and a country that is fiscally restrained destocking of Bovine /ovine biomass needs to be matched by the removal of equivalent human biomass from NZ.
No welfare state,15-20% mortgages,councillors reduced to minimum hourly rate for meetings only,a reduction in MP'S a population of around 1990 or less.
Curbing methane emissions: How five industries can counter a major climate threat [23 Sept 2021]
Companies can take three no-regrets actions to begin reducing methane emissions Action 2: Support sustainable consumption. Stakeholders could develop mechanisms to differentiate assets and score products based on their methane footprints. If every kilogram of rice, million British thermal units (MMBtu) of natural gas, ton of steel, pound of meat, barrel of oil, and ton of coal came with a methane-intensity label, the market signals could support a more orderly decarbonization transition. With this, retailers and consumers could make more informed purchasing decisions, producers could define new foundations for competitive advantage, and investors could better understand portfolio risk.
Or we can support unsustainable consumption – it's a 'free' choice.
New analysis shows microbial sources fueling rise of atmospheric methane [17 June 2021]
The sudden and sustained rise in atmospheric levels of the potent greenhouse gas methane since 2007 has posed one of the most significant and pressing questions in climate research: Where is it coming from?
Fossil fuel emissions? Biological sources? A diminished capacity by the atmosphere to break down methane? A climate tipping point?
…
Lan said the data pointed to microbial sources, such as natural wetlands, shallow lakes and rivers, and human-managed sources like livestock, landfills, rice paddies, and wastewater treatment.
Quantifying fossil fuel methane emissions using observations of atmospheric ethane and an uncertain emission ratio [25 March 2022]
Using the joint methane–ethane inverse model, we estimate annual mean UK methane emissions of approximately 0.27 (95 % uncertainty interval 0.26–0.29) Tg yr−1 from fossil fuel sources and 2.06 (1.99–2.15) Tg yr−1 from non-fossil fuel sources, during the period 2015–2019. https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/22/3911/2022/acp-22-3911-2022.html
The half-life of methane in the atmosphere is around 9.1 years so NO it has not all disappeared in 10 years. Only half of it has converted into CO2 and water vapour – both also GHGs. After another 9.1 years another 1/4 of the original amount will have converted into CO2 and water vapour, and then another 9.1 years later 1/8 and so on. That is how half-lifes work.
My point here is, and has always been, we don't see enough Edmeades in the media because they have issues with some mainstream narratives on climate change.
The main point is that Edmeades represents about 2.5% of scientific opinion on the matter. The jury is well out against him and for good reason. There are numerous papers and reports that show that the Methane cycle is out of balance – largely caused by increased numbers of agricultural livestock. A fair summary is here:
A 2006 UN FAO report reported that livestock generate more greenhouse gases as measured in CO2 equivalents than the entire transportation sector. Livestock accounts for 9 percent of anthropogenic CO2, 65 percent of anthropogenic nitrous oxide and 37 percent of anthropogenic methane. A senior UN official and co-author of the report, Henning Steinfeld, said "Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems."[63]
Recent NASA research has confirmed the vital role of enteric fermentation in livestock on global warming. "We understand that other greenhouse gases apart from carbon dioxide are important for climate change today," said Gavin Schmidt, the lead author of the study and a researcher at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City and Columbia University's Center for Climate Systems Research.[64] Other recent peer reviewed NASA research published in the journal Science has also indicated that the contribution of methane to global warming has been underestimated
''The half-life of methane in the atmosphere is around 9.1 years so NO it has not all disappeared in 10 years. Only half of it has converted into CO2 and water vapour – both also GHGs. After another 9.1 years another 1/4 of the original amount will have converted into CO2 and water vapour, and then another 9.1 years later 1/8 and so on. That is how half-lifes work.''
Could you please provide a link ? That's not how I understand things.
Half-life is defined as the amount of time it takes a given quantity to decrease to half of its initial value. The term is most commonly used in relation to atoms undergoing radioactive decay, but can be used to describe other types of decay, whether exponential or not.
Methane has a large effect but for a relatively brief period, having an estimated mean half-life of 9.1 years in the atmosphere,[21][page needed] whereas carbon dioxide is currently given an estimated mean lifetime of over 100 years.
The globally averaged concentration of methane in Earth's atmosphere increased by about 150% from 722 ± 25 ppb in 1750 to 1803.2 ± 1.2 ppb in 2011.[22] As of 2011, methane contributed radiative forcing of 0.48 ± 0.05 Wm−2,[23] or about 17% of the total radiative forcing from all of the long-lived and globally mixed greenhouse gases.[citation needed] According to NOAA, the atmospheric methane concentration has continued to increase since 2011 to an average global concentration of 1892.2 ppb as of December 2020.[24] The March 2019 peak was 1866.2 ppb, while the April 2020 peak was 1876.0 ppb, a .5% increase.[24]
If the concept of half-life will take you a few days to mull over, how long did it take you to mull over magnetism and paramagnetism? The mind boggles …
"Seabird colonies in New Zealand represent the rich diversity of coastal and pelagic seabirds, and are hotspots of intense nutrient and trace element cycling that provide examples of natural nutrient enrichment in terrestrial and stream ecosystems."
Quote from the first paragraph of the review conclusions.
We are talking high density farming with no biomass accumulation as in a forest.
Talking of fert , I have tried nearly everything. Yet I've narrowed things down to seaweed, lawn clippings and salt. Salt has all the minerals many soils need due to depletion. My crops go crazy.
Could you pass this on to Rob, Weka. Best it comes from you.
farmers can make their crops go crazy in various ways. Or they can ask nature for a helping hand and make their farms live in perpetuity once the fossil fuels and artificial inputs are gone.
Agree 100%. I'm an organic farmer. Although it must be remembered organic farming like vegan diets demands very careful management and in some cases isn't superior to conventional farming ( in my opinion). Beetroots for example have a higher nitrate content when grown conventionally. And that's what health nuts and body builders want – a high nitrate profile.
"Aotearoa New Zealand’s pastoral agriculture has been entirely based on this through the use of grass and clover pastures. Indeed until the expansion of dairying since the 1990s, pastoral and arable farming here used no nitrogen fertilisers – all the nitrogen came from clovers biologically fixing it. This is how organic agriculture that prohibits the use of nitrogen fertilisers works. It is therefore possible to farm without using any nitrogen fertiliser at all, in contrast to lithospheric fertilisers. Yes, compromises have to be made in the production system and there can be profit implications, but, Aotearoa New Zealand farmed for nearly its entire history without nitrogen fertilisers so it is possible to do so again."
I see it as akin to our use of PKE….we waste over a billion a year (IIRC) importing a product that is effectively unnecessary. A lot of our issues can be traced back to the need to service greatly inflated land values that force everyone to maximise every possible skerrick of production to satisfy the bank.
In my forest garden, I've included a wide range of leguminous plants; clovers, vetches, lupines, peas, beans, kakabeak, kowhai, tagasaste, laburnum, gleditsia, etc. to serve as nitrogen-collectors for the benefit of the other plants.
New Zealand farmers will return to plant-generated nitrates for their pastures before too long. Many already have.
I hope the warming environment doesn’t favour weevils.
I'm betting farmers don't choose "the need to service greatly inflated land values that force everyone to maximise every possible skerrick of production to satisfy the bank." either.
Well the capital gains farmers, which appears to be the majority of "farm investors" these days, chose it, in the expectations of high returns on selling the farms.
Like the “house hoarders”, capital gains, not the long term future of farming, is the goal.
In old terms – all up, 10 acres. When I say lawn clippings, that also includes other green matter as well. The place was liberally coated with rock dust about 15 years ago, not so much for the minerals, but for the paramagnetism.
''Unless your lawn is huge. What percentage of your farm is lawn? It would have to be considerable to be able to service 10 acres.''
About one third. Also boundary weeds and leaves etc. Bio Char is interesting. It is self perpetuating. But in some respects has been over sold. How Bio Char was used in the Amazon is still not completely understood.
''If you are using seawater, you'd need a considerable amount to cover 10 acres; how do you collect that much seawater.''
Fair questions. It's not viable for most farmers. Hence ocean solids are mixed with farm water and then spread. This dude in the clip is obviously a hobby farmer like me. Other clips will show how salt in used in bigger operation.
I buy. But for someone like you with plenty of prunings ( I would assume) you could make your own quite easily. Just remember to inoculate it.
"The place was liberally coated with rock dust about 15 years ago"
I didn't realise you are still applying it – why is that? Does your land need a top-up?
I only applied it once as stated above for the paramagnetism. People forget rock dust can take ages to be broke down by bacteria. It is not bio available for a long time. Hence by using salt I am not doubling up on minerals or applying rock dust in a different form each year.
Interesting to hear about your "Viktor Schauberger like tech." for vortexing your water. Those are pretty cool technologies – where did you get yours? What form does it take? It is possible to make your own – is that what you've done. Interesting stuff, Blade. I'd like to hear more!
I see..yes, I still buy it but not for my own use at present. We are soaking dust in water and using it in compost at a rellies place. He likes to grow herbs. I have told him he may be wasting his time with rock dust. He see's thing differently, time will tell. If I'm wrong, I learn something new.
I had mine made. It's a very simple affair. Something like the copper pipe in this link.
But before you doing anything like that. Do this. Buy one. The price is highway robbery. I bought a packet of them for $4, I think, a while back on Ali express. But with postage delay at present, it's better to pay the higher price.
Then you can experiment. Minimum four twists one way, four the other way. Then water a pot plant etc. Better still, drink a cup of the water and if liver isn't clean, or your body needs a clean out, you will be down with flu like symptoms.
Yet I've narrowed things down to seaweed, lawn clippings and salt…
My crops go crazy.
Blade, do you mean NaCl (sodium chloride) salt, or nitrogen, potassium, sulfur, and phosphorus (mineral) salts? Just asking because I would have thought NaCl (sea salt) couldn't be too good for your orange tree.
My small orange tree does alright with a few NPK granules springled along the drip line twice a year. NaCl would be much cheaper. Should I apply sparingly?
Don't want my orange crop to become completely deranged
No, ordinary unrefined sea salt. Trust me ,when I first heard of this I called bs. I was wrong. It's one of the most potent fertilisers I have ever used . See my links.
The ratio is three and a half litres of water to 1 teaspoon of salt, once per month.
Others use way more. Some less. I also sprinkle a handful of salt around a mature tree once a year.
The salt must be unrefined. The minerals in unrefined salt provides a degree of buffering. Refined salt is worthless and will kill your plants. It's not good for human health either. Makes a good weed killer though.
Even though I get great results, I was brought up on the notion salt is a poison for plants. I can't shake that mind conditioning. I still freak out when using salt on my plants. So I suggest you carry on with what you are doing with your orange tree and just use salt on a test plant to put your mind a ease.
Salt water from the sea can be applied directly once a month. Others suggest 1/3 sea water to 2/3 tap water.
It's true some plants are salt sensitive. Your link says that about citrus. But I have never had a problem with the above routines. However, it may be prudent to take a year off now and again.
Good luck. You could use a variety of fertilisers and have all bases covered.
I must warn you, if Doug Edmeades comments on this thread, and sees this he’s going to call me a quack and you a fool. Crikey, the irony.
Quote:
''Analysis of economic detriments. Dr Edmeades estimated the economic detriments as follows: "Assuming a farm (either dairy or sheep/beef) with optimum soil fertility. The science tells us that production will decline by about 5% per annum if the nutrients lost from the farm annually (i.e. in products off the farm, from leaching and runoff of nutrients, and transfer of nutrients to non-productive areas) are not replaced with fertilizer inputs. The important nutrients in this regard are P, K, S and Mg. Probitas when used as recommended contains insignificant amounts of these nutrients and therefore will not maintain the soil nutrient levels against the losses.''
It's not super-duper phosphate, Robert. It was meant to be spread with equal parts Dolomite. Now you know why much of our pastural land is out of kilter.
Not research -practical applications. I understand. It's a little too advanced. And you cannot conceive of me doing such stuff. But Robert, you didn't fool me. Anyone could see you were stringing me along. You don't go from trolling me, to suddenly hanging off my every word.
So why did I waste my time on you? Simple. As a testament to the machination of an Immoral Lefty mindset that knows no limits. A future reference for those asking for proof about the faults of Lefties I supposedly write about.
"As a testament to the machination of an Immoral Lefty mindset that knows no limits. A future reference for those asking for proof about the faults of Lefties I supposedly write about."
Our damned fine Minister of Police, in response to a sarcastic question from little David, as to how she would characterise her comment to bully boy Mercenary Mitchell as 'riding shot-gun with the boys,' she replied as pretty accurate!
Slap down!
Poto is another one of many fine Labour Government ministers.
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On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
What is it with the mining industry? Its not enough for them to pillage the earth - they apparently can't even be bothered getting resource consent to do so: The proponent behind a major mine near the Clutha River had already been undertaking activity in the area without a ...
Photo # 1 I am a huge fan of Singapore’s approach to housing, as described here two years ago by copying and pasting from The ConversationWhat Singapore has that Australia does not is a public housing developer, the Housing Development Board, which puts new dwellings on public and reclaimed land, ...
Buzz from the Beehive Reactions to news of the government’s readiness to make urgent changes to “the resource management system” through a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) suggest a balanced approach is being taken. The Taxpayers’ Union says the proposed changes don’t go far enough. Greenpeace says ...
I’m starting to wonder if Anna Burns-Francis might be the best political interviewer we’ve got. That might sound unlikely to you, it came as a bit of a surprise to me.Jack Tame can be excellent, but has some pretty average days. I like Rebecca Wright on Newshub, she asks good ...
Chris Trotter writes – Willie Jackson is said to be planning a “media summit” to discuss “the state of the media and how to protect Fourth Estate Journalism”. Not only does the Editor of The Daily Blog, Martyn Bradbury, think this is a good idea, but he has also ...
Graeme Edgeler writes – This morning [April 21], the Wellington High Court is hearing a judicial review brought by Hon. Karen Chhour, the Minister for Children, against a decision of the Waitangi Tribunal. This is unusual, judicial reviews are much more likely to brought against ministers, rather than ...
Both of Parliament’s watchdogs have now ripped into the Government’s Fast-track Approvals Bill. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāMy pick of the six newsey things to know from Aotearoa’s political economy and beyond on the morning of Tuesday, April 23 are:The Lead: The Auditor General,John Ryan, has joined the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarah SpengemanPeople wait to board an electric bus in Pune, India. (Image credit: courtesy of ITDP) Public transportation riders in Pune, India, love the city’s new electric buses so much they will actually skip an older diesel bus that ...
The infrastructure industry yesterday issued a “hurry up” message to the Government, telling it to get cracking on developing a pipeline of infrastructure projects.The hiatus around the change of Government has seen some major projects cancelled and others delayed, and there is uncertainty about what will happen with the new ...
Hi,Over the weekend I revisited a podcast I really adore, Dead Eyes. It’s about a guy who got fired from Band of Brothers over two decades ago because Tom Hanks said he had “dead eyes”.If you don’t recall — 2001’s Band of Brothers was part of the emerging trend of ...
Buzz from the Beehive The 180 or so recipients of letters from the Government telling them how to submit infrastructure projects for “fast track” consideration includes some whose project applications previously have been rejected by the courts. News media were quick to feature these in their reports after RMA Reform Minister Chris ...
It would not be a desirable way to start your holiday by breaking your back, your head, or your wrist, but on our first hour in Singapore I gave it a try.We were chatting, last week, before we started a meeting of Hazel’s Enviro Trust, about the things that can ...
Calling all journalists, academics, planners, lawyers, political activists, environmentalists, and other members of the public who believe that the relationships between vested interests and politicians need to be scrutinised. We need to work together to make sure that the new Fast-Track Approvals Bill – currently being pushed through by the ...
Feel worried. Shane Jones and a couple of his Cabinet colleagues are about to be granted the power to override any and all objections to projects like dams, mines, roads etc even if: said projects will harm biodiversity, increase global warming and cause other environmental harms, and even if ...
Bryce Edwards writes- The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. ...
Michael Bassett writes – If you think there is a move afoot by the radical Maori fringe of New Zealand society to create a parallel system of government to the one that we elect at our triennial elections, you aren’t wrong. Over the last few days we have ...
Without a corresponding drop in interest rates, it’s doubtful any changes to the CCCFA will unleash a massive rush of home buyers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The six things that stood out to me in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Monday, April 22 included:The Government making a ...
Sunday was a lazy day. I started watching Jack Tame on Q&A, the interviews are usually good for something to write about. Saying the things that the politicians won’t, but are quite possibly thinking. Things that are true and need to be extracted from between the lines.As you might know ...
In our Weekly Roundup last week we covered news from Auckland Transport that the WX1 Western Express is going to get an upgrade next year with double decker electric buses. As part of the announcement, AT also said “Since we introduced the WX1 Western Express last November we have seen ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 29 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Stats NZ releases its statutory report on Census 2023 tomorrow.Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivers a pre-Budget speech at ...
A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 14, 2024 thru Sat, April 20, 2024. Story of the week Our story of the week hinges on these words from the abstract of a fresh academic ...
The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. The Government says this will ...
This is a column to say thank you. So many of have been in touch since Mum died to say so many kind and thoughtful things. You’re wonderful, all of you. You’ve asked how we’re doing, how Dad’s doing. A little more realisation each day, of the irretrievable finality of ...
Identifying the engine type in your car is crucial for various reasons, including maintenance, repairs, and performance upgrades. Knowing the specific engine model allows you to access detailed technical information, locate compatible parts, and make informed decisions about modifications. This comprehensive guide will provide you with a step-by-step approach to ...
Introduction: The allure of racing is undeniable. The thrill of speed, the roar of engines, and the exhilaration of competition all contribute to the allure of this adrenaline-driven sport. For those who yearn to experience the pinnacle of racing, becoming a race car driver is the ultimate dream. However, the ...
Introduction Automobiles have become ubiquitous in modern society, serving as a primary mode of transportation and a symbol of economic growth and personal mobility. With countless vehicles traversing roads and highways worldwide, it begs the question: how many cars are there in the world? Determining the precise number is a ...
Maintaining a safe and reliable vehicle requires regular inspections. Whether it’s a routine maintenance checkup or a safety inspection, knowing how long the process will take can help you plan your day accordingly. This article delves into the factors that influence the duration of a car inspection and provides an ...
Mazda Motor Corporation, commonly known as Mazda, is a Japanese multinational automaker headquartered in Fuchu, Aki District, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. The company was founded in 1920 as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd., and began producing vehicles in 1931. Mazda is primarily known for its production of passenger cars, but ...
Your car battery is an essential component that provides power to start your engine, operate your electrical systems, and store energy. Over time, batteries can weaken and lose their ability to hold a charge, which can lead to starting problems, power failures, and other issues. Replacing your battery before it ...
In most states, you cannot register a car without a valid driver’s license. However, there are a few exceptions to this rule. Exceptions to the RuleIf you are under 18 years old: In some states, you can register a car in your name even if you do not ...
Mazda, a Japanese automotive manufacturer with a rich history of innovation and engineering excellence, has emerged as a formidable player in the global car market. Known for its reputation of producing high-quality, fuel-efficient, and driver-oriented vehicles, Mazda has consistently garnered praise from industry experts and consumers alike. In this article, ...
Struts are an essential part of a car’s suspension system. They are responsible for supporting the weight of the car and damping the oscillations of the springs. Struts are typically made of steel or aluminum and are filled with hydraulic fluid. How Do Struts Work? Struts work by transferring the ...
Car registration is a mandatory process that all vehicle owners must complete annually. This process involves registering your car with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and paying an associated fee. The registration process ensures that your vehicle is properly licensed and insured, and helps law enforcement and other authorities ...
Zoom is a video conferencing service that allows you to share your screen, webcam, and audio with other participants. In addition to sharing your own audio, you can also share the audio from your computer with other participants. This can be useful for playing music, sharing presentations with audio, or ...
Building your own computer can be a rewarding and cost-effective way to get a high-performance machine tailored to your specific needs. However, it also requires careful planning and execution, and one of the most important factors to consider is the time it will take. The exact time it takes to ...
Sleep mode is a power-saving state that allows your computer to quickly resume operation without having to boot up from scratch. This can be useful if you need to step away from your computer for a short period of time but don’t want to shut it down completely. There are ...
Introduction Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) has revolutionized the field of translation by harnessing the power of technology to assist human translators in their work. This innovative approach combines specialized software with human expertise to improve the efficiency, accuracy, and consistency of translations. In this comprehensive article, we will delve into the ...
In today’s digital age, mobile devices have become an indispensable part of our daily lives. Among the vast array of portable computing options available, iPads and tablet computers stand out as two prominent contenders. While both offer similar functionalities, there are subtle yet significant differences between these two devices. This ...
A computer is an electronic device that can be programmed to carry out a set of instructions. The basic components of a computer are the processor, memory, storage, input devices, and output devices. The Processor The processor, also known as the central processing unit (CPU), is the brain of the ...
Voice Memos is a convenient app on your iPhone that allows you to quickly record and store audio snippets. These recordings can be useful for a variety of purposes, such as taking notes, capturing ideas, or recording interviews. While you can listen to your voice memos on your iPhone, you ...
Laptop screens are essential for interacting with our devices and accessing information. However, when lines appear on the screen, it can be frustrating and disrupt productivity. Understanding the underlying causes of these lines is crucial for finding effective solutions. Types of Screen Lines Horizontal lines: Also known as scan ...
Right-clicking is a common and essential computer operation that allows users to access additional options and settings. While most desktop computers have dedicated right-click buttons on their mice, laptops often do not have these buttons due to space limitations. This article will provide a comprehensive guide on how to right-click ...
Powering up and shutting down your ASUS laptop is an essential task for any laptop user. Locating the power button can sometimes be a hassle, especially if you’re new to ASUS laptops. This article will provide a comprehensive guide on where to find the power button on different ASUS laptop ...
Dell laptops are renowned for their reliability, performance, and versatility. Whether you’re a student, a professional, or just someone who needs a reliable computing device, a Dell laptop can meet your needs. However, if you’re new to Dell laptops, you may be wondering how to get started. In this comprehensive ...
Two-thirds of the country think that “New Zealand’s economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful”. They also believe that “New Zealand needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful”. These are just two of a handful of stunning new survey results released ...
In today’s digital world, screenshots have become an indispensable tool for communication and documentation. Whether you need to capture an important email, preserve a website page, or share an error message, screenshots allow you to quickly and easily preserve digital information. If you’re an Asus laptop user, there are several ...
A factory reset restores your Gateway laptop to its original factory settings, erasing all data, apps, and personalizations. This can be necessary to resolve software issues, remove viruses, or prepare your laptop for sale or transfer. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to factory reset your Gateway laptop: Method 1: ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Refreshed health guidance released today will help parents and schools make informed decisions about whether their child needs to be in school, addressing one of the key issues affecting school attendance, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. In recent years, consistently across all school terms, short-term illness or medical reasons ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is streamlining high-level oceans management while maintaining a focus on supporting the sector’s role in the export-led recovery of the economy. “I am working to realise the untapped potential of our fishing and aquaculture sector. To achieve that we need to be smarter with ...
I was initially resistant to the idea often suggested to me that the Government should deliver an arts strategy. The whole point of the arts and creativity is that people should do whatever the hell they want, unbound by the dictates of politicians in Wellington. Peter Jackson, Kiri Te Kanawa, Eleanor ...
Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson is speaking at the International Wool Textile Organisation Congress in Adelaide, promoting New Zealand wool, and outlining the coalition Government’s support for the revitalisation the sector. "New Zealand’s wool exports reached $400 million in the year to 30 June 2023, and the coalition Government ...
A poem from Robin Peace’s new collection Detritus of Empire: feather / grass / rock. Cereal giving I see a woman’s hands, see her curious hands break a stalk as she walks through the tall prairie, the savannah, the steppe, wherever it was. See her idly bite the grass that ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Hemingway’s Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)A handsomely produced (debossed cover, lovely ...
The Commissioner's decision validates the longstanding efforts of the local community and ensures that Awataha Marae will be managed to serve the needs of the local community, particularly for hosting tangihanga. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Salles, Associate professor, University of Sydney Examples of Australian landscapes.Unsplash Seventy thousand years ago, the sea level was much lower than today. Australia, along with New Guinea and Tasmania, formed a connected landmass known as Sahul. Around this time – ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felicity Castagna, Lecturer, Creative Writing, Western Sydney University Day Day Market, ParramattaPhoto: Garry Trinh I live on the edge of Parramatta, Australia’s fastest-growing city, on the kind of old-fashioned suburban street that has 1950s fibros constructed in the post-war housing boom, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Ryan, Teaching Fellow in Economics, University of Waikato GettyImagesfatido/Getty Images There is an ongoing global debate over whether the high inflation seen in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic can be lowered without a recession. New Zealand is not ...
The ‘Wicked Game’ heartthrob is in his late 60s now. That didn’t stop him putting on a lively, goofy and very sparkly show. Apart from ‘Wicked Game’, which graces a sultry playlist of mine simply called 💋, my last sustained Chris Isaak listening session took place when I was about ...
Analysis - Two ministers were stripped of portfolios in a warning to Cabinet, drama broke out at the Waitangi Tribunal, and the gang patch ban bill ran into opposition. ...
Tara Ward makes an impassioned plea for some vital pop culture merch. In April 1999, I became obsessed with a new reality television show called Popstars. Every Tuesday night, five strangers transformed into music royalty before my very eyes as Joe, Keri, Carly, Erika and Megan were chosen to form ...
PNG Post-Courier In the early hours of ANZAC Day, aerial photographs captured an impressive gathering of Australians and Papua New Guineans at Isurava in the Northern (Oro) Province. The solemn dawn service yesterday was held at a site steeped in history, where some of the fiercest battles of World War ...
The PSA is shocked that Oranga Tamariki has used the cost cutting drive to downgrade its commitment to Te Ao Māori and remove many specialist Māori roles. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Kemish, Adjunct Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland There can be no more powerful symbol of the relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea than the prime ministers of these neighbouring countries walking together on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sharon Robinson, Distinguished Professor and Deputy Director of ARC Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF), University of Wollongong, University of Wollongong Andrew Netherwood Over the last 25 years, the ozone hole which forming over Antarctica each spring has started to shrink. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Viktoria Kahui, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Economics, University of Otago Getty Images/Amy Toensing Biodiversity is declining at rates unprecedented in human history. This suggests the ways we currently use to manage our natural environment are failing. One emerging concept focuses on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Colin Bednall, Associate Professor in Management, Swinburne University of Technology marvent/Shutterstock Finding the best person to fill a position can be tough, from drafting a job ad to producing a shortlist of top interview candidates. Employers typically consider information from ...
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Gutten Tag from Austria.
No masks, no mandates' life is normal in Europe. Weather is warm.
Things are cheap as compared to NZ.
[No follow-up response received to Mod notes; take the 2 weeks off and enjoy your trip – Incognito]
Mod note
Coming to a town near you.
"For the next four months, a doctor will be available just three days a week at the medical centre, instead of five, and many of those consultations will be by video, not in person."
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/cuts-to-gp-service-alarm-west-coast-town
The NZ growth in video doctor consults is massive. Do it from your bed!
Death bed?
*wry smile
I would have thought teleconsults could be done from Chch too, so it's not entirely clear what is happening here.
Best way I can think of to get a GP to live in that area would be to gift them some land with a decent house on it.
The problem is that if you have "a" GP they never get time off. They are on call 24 hours of every day and holidays become almost impossible to arrange. It would need more than providing a house to overcome that problem.
At least a doctor who works in a big city Medical Centre can take holidays.
Reported my + covid result yesterday afternoon. My GP called me on my mobile last night to ensure I was ok, stocked up with medication and supplies, and to ensure I knew the signs of significant problems. Offered a loan of a pulse oximeter, they have 15 for loaning out, but my daughter had bought me one (and a body temp sensor) about 6 months back.
I don't think you'd get better service from a GP than that.
Do you know what a locum is?
Well yes, I do know what a locum is.
I don't understand your question though in terms of your original comment. When you said "a GP to live in that area would be to gift them some land with a decent house on it." I assumed you meant a permanent resident, not a locum. Were you suggesting a house for a locum would be an incentive?
If, on the other hand, you were suggesting that the permanent doctor could get a locum so they could take a holiday I don't see how they could do it. If the DHB can't find locums how is an individual doctor going to do any better?
The DHB can find locums, just not enough in the current system. Who do you think does the three days a week currently? Having a permanent GP would change things a lot, then bring in locums as the GP needs to go on holiday, have breaks etc. It's not an all or nothing.
From the link,
Perhaps two GPs – one full-time and one who wants to reduce workload and willing to work part-time and be on call.
My late father did a locum for a rural GP in the mid 1950's. He was advised that many of the locals had not yet grasped the principles of a cash economy. He got the GMS benefit for everyone he saw, but the rest was very much "in kind". Fortunately my mother was raised on a farm and her father was a butcher so being confronted with large lumps of recently demised animal or bird (often complete with shotgun pellets) did not worry her. She could also pluck and dress a chicken. We were particularly happy if someone had been over to the coast and we got fresh or smoked fish or crayfish. When there was not produce it was "mow your lawn Doc?" or "clean your car Doc?". We certainly ate well and his tax return was very good that year,
Might work for a couple who are both GPs? But assuming they have accommodation for locums, I was thinking a freehold house would be the kind of incentive for someone to make the move permanently.
Yes, I agree.
But was thinking a family home with a separate apartment would work.
Buy two houses and then they have more choice.
$350,000 – $400,000 each. Wonder how much the DHB is spending on travel and accommodation now.
True. I was thinking for attracting young people sometimes low maintenance is attractive. So is extra income option with Air B n B.
"Chair Lisa Neil says the absence of a GP will load more work on to the minimal nursing staff at the medical centre.
“We have a vulnerable elderly community here and the nurses are already under pressure dealing with Covid in the community.”
Cutting services at a time when Reefton people are in the thick of the epidemic and under stress from spiralling living costs is a bad idea, Neil says.
“It’s a real blow. People are reluctant to front up [with depression] as it is, and if you’re dealing with an intimate problem, elderly people especially won’t be comfortable talking to a TV screen and having an extra person in there with them as well.”
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/cuts-to-gp-service-alarm-west-coast-town
Who needs a face to face with a GP anyway…..hopefully nobody.
Whatever it is, they're against it!
The co-founders of Groundswell admit they have not read the three waters legislation they are so vehemently against.
[…]
Groundswell co-founders Laurie Paterson and Bryce McKenzie also said they haven't read the proposed legislation. Paterson says, nonetheless, they're opposed to what's on the table.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018845171/groundswell-co-founders-haven-t-read-bill-they-re-vehemently-against
Yup, same attitude and response from ‘critics’ of Three Waters roaming free here on TS. They refuse to engage with the proposals, they choose to close off their minds, and they self-justify this by pointing at all sorts of things being thrown around in the MSM and by the opposition parties, i.e. pointing at ‘hidden agendas’, alleged ‘secrecy’ and ‘dishonesty’, ‘stealth’, et cetera. They will never have to find out how good or bad the reforms might be (very bad, of course) and they simply stick their fingers in their ears. But at the end of the day it is always the same as from the outset: prejudice, pure & perfect prejudice. However, never say this to those people because they’ll flip their lid in a fit of incongruence rage.
Co-governance is a thorny one. Take the Canterbury Regional Council (Ngāi Tahu Representation Bill) currently going through parliament. To my mind Ngāi Tahu getting to appoint two representatives to an elected board is undemocratic.
But of course, the same people vigorously race baiting over this co-governance arrangement were more than happy in 2010 when National dumped the elected councillors and replaced them with commissioners to enable the pillaging and theft of Canterbury's water resources on behalf of corporate dairy interests.
So the opposition to Ngāi Tahu getting two representatives isn't so much a principled defense of democracy as being aggrieved the wrong people are getting a nice salary for life.
Personally, I strongly doubt the Ngāi Tahu representatives will prove to be any better guardians of the waters of Canterbury than some entitled cocky whose family arrived on the Charlotte Jane in 1850. The squabble is really over which bunch of entitled twots get to make money out of the commons that is water. To that extent, I oppose co-governance – to my mind, greed is colour and race blind and the only way to really keep an eye on these wannabe rentiers for life and keep them in check is full participatory democracy.
Labour just sacked the democratically elected DHBs /shrug.
Bit of a difference between an entity being disestablished and the board being sacked while the entity continues operating.
sacking was a reference to when National sacked the elected members of the Area Health Boards in the early 90s.
Ngai Tahu are one of (if not) the biggest owners of dairy farms in Canterbury. If any other sector were given 2 seats on ECAN it would be called a Conflict of Interest.
If you’re referring to royalties, I’ve seen arguments these could have advantages over the non-pricing structure currently in place for drinking water. I fail to see, at present, that this is a get-rich-quick scheme for anybody, but greed is not in my nature.
The only consistent prejudice I see on display here is the one that says anything to do with white people is to be discounted, deplored and derided at every opportunity.
According to Witi Ihimaera it is a Maori Universe after all.
Do we have to take the my dad's better than your dad plagiarist, or anything he writes, seriously?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/reviewer-claims-more-plagiarism-in-ihimaera-novel/4I62ATPIUE5GXEVO3757AR3JYM/
I’ve long given up on the idea that one size fits all.
Two things frighten them. Anything that eats into profit, and anything that gives Maori any say in the environment.
It’s amusing that a farmer from Gore has taken a position opposing the 3 Waters reforms.
Gore has a combined sewage / stormwater system. A throwback from the 19th century and rather expensive to fix. It’s also got a shrinking ratepayer (dying) ratepayer base. Without the socialisation of costs that 3 Waters will bring Gore will probably cease to exist as the rates required will be unsustainable.
A combined sewer-stormwater system is a modern septic outrage.
WTF is that Council doing?
Auckland Council's Stormwater team and Watercare only finished separating out flows from the whole of the Ponsonby-Herne Bay-Freemans Bay-Wynyard Quarter catchment last year. Including a 3.3metre diameter stormwater line 600 metres long.
They still have 2 years to go doing the Central Interceptor project that separates most of the previously joined system. That's over $1b of work in that one alone.
Well they’ve got a seriously good Art Gallery… But they are thinking about it and I think they will start in a few years, it’ll probably take 20 years at what they can afford. If there’s a poster child for 3 Water it’s Gore Anywhere else would have been amalgamated three reforms ago
But as you’ve pointed out Auckland isn’t too flash in this regard, and at a much larger and more public scale. This gets hard to fix and most TAs don’t have Aucklands scale and resources
After the 1990's nact inflicted disasters that beset the city Whanganui was unable to afford a ten year waste water separation scheme. But we did.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/whanganui-chronicle/news/stormwater-separation-129-houses-from-completion/UXGZEVBHTCGMXEFBCNAGVYD6M4/?c_id=1503426&objectid=11011217
apart from the financial forecast, what problems does Gore have with its drinking water, greywater and sewerage?
In much / most of Gore and Mataura there is only one pipe for sewage and stormwater. When it rains the lot goes into the shit ponds which discharge into the river. Hasn’t been ideal practice since about 1900.
My reckons is there is no further polling damage 3-Waters can do to the government. The legislation will be implemented without fuss. But it will take over a decade to notice much difference.
The really big difference is the state fresh water regulator enforcing the National Fresh Water Drinking Standards, upon water systems from lazy shitty little farmer-owned councils who didn't give a damn for decades.
My only reservations about three waters is water governance is being consolidated into a nice ripe target for privatisation by a future National government (which will inevitably involve a grubby little cronyist deal with corporate Iwi that'll entrench rentier lifestyles for all those lucky enough to be at the table when the divvy up is done) and a real sadness that it signals a complete and utter failure of local democracy.
I would have preferred the government had spent a few hundred million on a local democracy revival project before declaring them all incompetent.
I can't think of a single Wellington bureaucrat who would support strengthening local government.
They've gutted them ever deper since 1989.
and then they wonder why there is resistance.
The fresh water regulator is a positive step.
"My reckons is there is no further polling damage 3-Waters can do to the government."
I respectfully disagree. There are tens of thousands of people invested in privately owned rural schemes (plus the people in the hundred or so rural council owned schemes) who will suddenly find the schemes they have paid for they no longer control. There is the ongoing and deep set resentment across local government towards central government at the perceived loss of control over ratepayers assets. and at the way the process has been undertaken. And then there's the commitment of both National and Act to overturn the entire structure.
"But it will take over a decade to notice much difference."
Certainly there will be no benefit before the next election, and that is a huge problem, because over the next year the media will be full of reports of the cost of establishing the entities. This is a big play by Labour, and it will be interesting to see how the politics plays out.
I'm sure there are indeed several thousand on private water systems, but seriously Labour never had them to start with.
There will certainly be structural setup stories, but the river pollution stories are going to get bigger and bigger.
"I'm sure there are indeed several thousand on private water systems, but seriously Labour never had them to start with."
I have a friend who lives on a lifestyle block near Masterton. He's one of the many rural people who is part of a private scheme, and he voted for Labour in Wairarapa in 2020, along with significant others that saw the seat go red. He's one of many that will vote blue in 2023 due significantly because of 3Waters. That will play out across provincial NZ, IMHO.
When I was in a private developers scheme, I heaved a sigh of relief when the local council took over that ongoing liability, even though it cost a considerable sum at the time, to get the scheme connected to the public one.
Many of the smaller council's in particular, should be relieved that the costs will now be shared over a much wider area.
Would you be as equally relieved if the water authority determined your scheme was no longer viable?
They did, down the track, and rebuilt it into a new reticulation and treatment scheme.
and reduced your rates 80% at the same time?
No. Rates over the whole town went up a little to pay off the new scheme.
Much cheaper than we would have had to pay in annual levies for the private scheme,which only served about a hundred odd houses.
Economies of scale. Eh?
Or cross subsidy.
Economies of scale set against increased bureaucracy, larger and disparate areas of activity, promised improvement of both delivery and standard and thousands more employed.
Something dosnt add up.
Simply that the cost and efficiency of the water and waste water plants per user, improved, when going from about a hundred houses, in the private scheme, to being shared amongst over 8000.
"No. Rates over the whole town went up a little to pay off the new scheme."
Originally there was no water or sewage plant, except for the development.
Which of course was paid for by buyers, including myself, in the subdivision.
We would have had to pay all the ongoing costs ourselves of the rather expensive to run water and wastewater scheme split amongst a hundred households.
Noting that unit costs drop as plant gets bigger.
The rest of the town was on tank and septic tank.
Later the rest of the town was reticulated to the extended private scheme. Both water and wastewater supply.
Further down the track this was inadequate, as the town grew, and a new scheme was built. Every section paid a levy for the new scheme and ongoing running costs became part of rates.
Much cheaper per household than the original scheme. And saving a nice bit of coast from leaking septic tanks.
You are using terms you apparently dont understand….yes your (future) personal expense was reduced because it was met by a larger group whos future expense was increased…this is contrary to both what is promised by 3 Waters and economy of scale.
No. You fail to understand.
Their future expense went down.
No more maintaining septic tanks.
As did mine.
Economies of scale.
Again
"No. Rates over the whole town went up a little to pay off the new scheme."
Rates which are less than the ongoing costs per household, if the scheme wasn't done.
Originally non reticulated households, also benifited from the initial work and plant built and paid for by the houses in the private scheme, so if there was any cross subsidy, it was from those of us who paid for the private scheme at the start.
Everyone gained from the new scheme. At reduced ongoing cost per household.
@pat, we had a similar situation in our rural community.
However, in this case the local government solution was to require the developer to provide a considerably bigger upgrade for wastewater treatment than his resource consent number of properties warranted.
Once in place, other rural land was rezoned, and the council charged those developments to connect to the now upgraded system.
Other rural land in the area with Grade I soil, has followed with residential zoning, partly justified by the access to the waste water system which retains excess capacity.
A particularly pernicious way of rezoning rural land. In this case there are other factors that make this rezoning not as bad a full greenfields development but it does indicate the lack of transparency.
@ Molly.
I have no idea what is grade 1 soil but guess it is productive(?)
However designated land use is imo likely the only effective way of addressing the multitude of issues we face though it would need to be considered in a holistic manner…and it would be deeply unpopular.
When it comes to water infrastructure the problems and solutions remain the same regardless of governance form, management style or political persuasion.
@pat. Yes, Class I soils are productive. There are/were issues with the soil classifications maps that could be up to 5km out in some places. That might have been resolved.
However, the rural land here was not only zoned Class I, it was historically and currently used for food production.
The alternate reasons why this development is not as bad as it could be. There is a geological (topographical) limit to residential expansion, where the sprawl is contained. The community has a long history – pre treaty, and so is well serviced in terms of services and recreational community assets that have built up over time. There is remnants of a train station, with a working rail line. If passenger trains were reinstated to this line, residents would have a viable alternative to car travel.
In my opinion, this is a significantly different situation to other rural developments that have been permitted without connection to existing communities or public transport links.
@Molly
Many rural communities have historically survived and thrived without the 'benefit' of the latest infrastructure, however the environment (in both senses) has changed….and not for the better.
As one commenter noted a few days ago our population is widely dispersed and many of our communities small and distant from large scale infrastructure removing the option of consolidation….all of these will still require access to potable water, and to meet the standards for waste….and no one has yet addressed the question of contamination of water supplies be it nitrates, PFOS or whatever other contamination we discover that is both extremely difficult and expensive to remove and is historical.
These schemes have ben paid for by private citzens, who are quite happy to control their system, and not at all happy having it stolen from them.
Private schemes are outside the Three Waters reforms.
That's not what Keiran McAnulty told a meeting in the Wairarapa.
It's also not what people are being told in areas such as Queenstown.
I suspect there is some confusion.
Much has yet to be determined…there are areas where the new entities will have an impact on private schemes and there is also concurrent reform with Taumata Arowai
Perhaps you could dig into it and clear it up for us and your friend in Masterton?
Perhaps the government should have thought all this through before effectively stealing assets paid for by ratepayers and private citizens.
And again, you have no game
If I had more time to spend on this I would. In the meantime, confusion reigns, which suits you, doesn’t it?
Gee I wouldn’t go that far. We know enough to determine the scheme is inferior to alternatives.
But look I’ll be generous and save you some time. When you said “Private schemes are outside the Three Waters reforms” you obviously weren’t aware of this:
https://www.qldc.govt.nz/media/hv4bxvy3/acquisition-and-vesting-of-private-3-waters-scheme-policy-draft-rev-1-16-12-2021.pdf
I don't know how you managed to make the html in that comment so complicated, but I've stripped it out and made it more readable. It's good practice to put links in the clear especially if they are to PDFs. People need to see what they are clicking on.
I don’t have time to rebut this properly. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, you have not clarified anything, not cleared up the confusion but only added to it.
Clearly, you have an anti-Three Waters Reforms agenda. You quote some stuff to prove something but it isn’t clear what that is except to bolster your agenda of negativity.
Just briefly, from your linked PDF:
Your PDF also states:
Which means that you can go there and find out that private schemes are outside the Three Waters reform, as I correctly stated before. Unless you can find more recent info that contradicts this, e.g. because Government has done a U-turn.
So you are given a list of requirements proposed for private schemes and you double down! Your comment about private schemes being “outside the Three Waters reforms” was incorrect.
On the wider issue of 3Waters, I suggest you read the article by Sandra Coney in the Herald about the Waitakete Ranges.
[Link required. Don’t expect others to do the donkey work for you. And you have to explain why and how the NZH article is relevant to the discussion thread about Three Waters Reform and private schemes, not just point to it and say ‘read it’ – Incognito]
I suggest that when you make a suggestion for somebody to read something you include a link and spell names correctly. And if it is in the NZH then it better be not behind the pay-wall or it could be conceived as a troll comment by you – the onus is on you to avoid wasting other people’s time and not put them on wild goose chases through Google, the internet, and then find a brick wall and a hard stop when the article is finally found. I hope for your sake that this is not the case because you will receive a Mod note soon.
Since you seem be adamant on heaping confusion on the matter at hand rather than helping to clarify things I’ve made some time to do some digging.
Can you handle a one-page Summary Fact Sheet on Three Waters Reform – Rural water supplies? Sure you can; you handled the 18-page QLDC policy no sweat.
And
And
https://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/Files/three-waters-reform-programme-2021/$file/rural-water-supplies-fact-sheet-three-waters-reform-programme.pdf
Mod note
The link is in the original post. But you know that.
https://www.qldc.govt.nz/media/hv4bxvy3/acquisition-and-vesting-of-private-3-waters-scheme-policy-draft-rev-1-16-12-2021.pdf
The NZH article is relevant to the wider discussion about 3Waters and it’s merits. It’s worth purchasing a copy for.
[So, still no link to the NZH article and still no explanation why and how it is relevant to the discussion here. And now you suggest I and other readers here should pay and purchase a copy!? Because it’s worth it, in your opinion, without explaining why and how!?
The link I requested was to the NZH article. But you know that.
However, you provided the same link to the QLDC policy draft again, for the third time, after extensively and selectively quoting irrelevant stuff. I referred to it in my reply @ 11 June 2022 at 2:15 pm and I’ve quoted from it myself. But you know that.
It is unclear and ambiguous to refer to the “original post” without being more specific about which exact comment you mean. When I refer to the OP I refer to the blog/article/piece written by the Author, not to the beginning of a discussion thread or sub-thread. In any case, it is not clear what you’re referring to and this is OM!?
So, you’re a disingenuous troll here, baiting, diverting, obfuscating and you’re wasting Moderator time. Take a week off – Incognito]
Mod note
"Can you handle a one-page Summary Fact Sheet on Three Waters Reform – Rural water supplies? "
And then you go on to provide a link about transfer of ownership. Your claim was "Private schemes are outside the Three Waters reforms." and yet your own reference states:
"Private drinking water suppliers currently registered under the Health Act will have a year to comply under the Water Services Bill – this includes all public supplies and some large networked rural supplies."
If the scheme has to comply with any new regulations under 3Waters, it is simply false to suggest the scheme is ‘outside’ of the reforms.
And in anticipation that you will try to claim your comment was about 'ownership', the comment you were replying to when you made your claim, and my subsequent comments, have referred to 'control' not 'ownership'.
Nope, neither control nor ownership are transferred out of and away from private schemes. You’re confusing compliance with the new regulations and regulatory framework with loss of control, which is bot inaccurate and incorrect and amounts to fearmongering. The same fearmongering and propaganda as we might expect from some rural quarters with hysterical outburst and frankly ridiculous claims such as "They're stealing our water!", FFS. https://www.ruralnewsgroup.co.nz/rural-news/rural-general-news/they-re-stealing-our-water
To have something stolen from you, you have to own it in the first place. Some rural folk seem to think that they own the commons and because they have been free to use it and waste it they own it, for all intents & purposes. Now, who are the real thieves here?
By all accounts you’re quite intelligent, yet you don’t do anything to help clearing up confusion. Rather, you antagonise and obfuscate. The most obvious conclusion is that you have a deliberate agenda in stalling Three Waters Reform as much as possible and ideally make it fail.
https://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/Files/Three-waters-reform-programme-2022/$file/Three-Waters-Reform-boiled-down-May-2022.pdf
I cannot make it any clearer for you or for anybody else. To draw conclusions that are in direct contradiction with the information provided is a sure sign of being disingenuous and not commenting & debating here in good faith. This is the very strong impression you create time after time.
There is a full on white panic going on in certain parts of the country right now, assiduously dog whistled by an army of GOP adjacent racists and/or culture warriors like Laurie Paterson and in the MSM by an army of right wing opinionistas.
That this is a race based backlash can be discerned from the targets – co-governance, smearing Mahuta and attacking Poto Williams, racist fear mongering over three waters, the vigorously pumped conspiracy theories from He Puapua to white paranoia about rigging elections (see National MP David Bennett) to far out conspiracy theories like the great replacement theory which is increasingly being mainstreamed on the NZ right and popping up in comments sections of the likes of the NZ Herald.
But it's not about race, it's about privatisation….
The council-iwi working group, on which Smith was a member, had recommended an entrenched clause to stop the water assets' privatisation. The sale or transfer of even a single pipe would require the agreement of at least 75 percent of all MPs.
[…]
Infrastructure Minister Grant Robertson called on opposition parties to "step up" if they believed in public ownership. "We've heard certainly from the National Party that they've been throughout this process concerned about the loss of ownership in communities," he said. "Now they can step up and say 'we will agree that these assets won't be sold'."
But it's understood the National Party did not agree to support the entrenched clause, protecting against privatisation – it is ironic for Jason Smith that it is the party he has just joined that has effectively blocked the requirement for a super-majority.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/three-waters-entrenchment
Got it in one Sanctuary. And its percolating through centrist communities too. If you confront them – as I have with a few family members – they descend into fits of outrage because it's not racism. Oh yeah.
I have been following stories on the trip to England by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. There it is again. Racism in all its glory. Hatred and vitriol abounded in subtle and less subtle guises. They are dammed if they do and damned if they don't. I can't even begin to imagine the uproar if it had been their little boy, Archie who played up on the balcony and elsewhere.
It will be understandable if they never return to racist Britain.
I'm sure Britain will be ecstatic.
Meanwhile they're living in considerably-more-racist USA.
Really, you care what the H&M roadshow says or does? Talk about the pinnacle of irrelevance. At least the R Family (privileged though they may be) actually work [truly, you couldn't pay me to do their jobs, be in that goldfish bowl, and live a life in the public eye]
I had sympathy for H&M when they wanted to ditch it all; but the sympathy waned rapidly when it was apparent that they actually wanted to live like A-list celebrities, and were perfectly prepared to sacrifice their precious privacy at the altar of their new god, Netflix.
Actually I was picking up on Sanctuary @3.4 and talking about racism Belladonna. The example I gave is just the latest.
Don't care what you may think I care or don't care about, or for that matter what you may care or not care about. Don't do Netflix and don't follow the pair's antics in the US so don't know what you're talking about. And just so as you get the message I don't care either. 😈
Then perhaps you should use an example where you do care, and have bothered to do a minimal level of research.
I care about racism and other forms of destructive prejudice. I don't care about the circumstance or past mistakes of the individual/individuals who happen to be the targets.
A less judgemental approach to commenters based on… zero knowledge of their backgrounds or the extent of their "research" endeavours into matters that happen to be of interest to them would be helpful. You might find the favour being returned.
I you make a statement that
It's pretty obvious that you've done little or no research.
And I suggest a mirror, when you're talking about "less judgemental approach"
A LOT of venting about bullies….and Maaries and WHO should own the Water. Well, them Farmers of course ! (They already do……)
Apart from the people who drafted it, I doubt even the minister has read the whole thing. It would be more to the point to ask if they'd read the summary of the Bill and the discussion document.
Bad news for the Government.
The top five issues are:
1. Inflation/cost of living.
2. Housing/price of housing.
3. Healthcare/hospitals.
4. Petrol prices/fuel.
5. Crime/law and order.
National should be delighted with the attention Labour is giving 3 Waters.
https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2022-06/17th%20Ipsos%20New%20Zealand%20Issues%20Monitor%20-%207%20June%202022%20%28report%29.pdf
And when have the top five issues ever been anything else other than the ones quoted. You're a gullible idiot!
I'm sorry, I must have missed morning report. What do you mean?
I don't think they care about reelection at this point. I think the cabinet of mediocrity is simply hoping it gets as many of its social engineering reforms through by mid 2023 as possible.
They are doubling and trippling down on everything that makes them unpopular and have abandoned anything remotely popular.
People voted labour because they thought they might do something about unaffordable housing, unaffordable rents, living costs, mental health, welfare ,health, tax reforms and in 2017 Jacinda even said she supported drug reform.
Instead all those problems are worse and labour is worrying about Geoffrey Palmer esque pie in the sky constitutional reforms and social engineering.
Tens of thousands wait on social housing lists and labour won't increase the percentage of social housing in total supply better to just copy national and throw them in costly motels rather than build state housing which is revenue asset for the govt but nevermind.
Private Rentals are impossible to find but theres a hundred thousand empty houses in NZ the govt just shrugs. Instead of developing land and building houses we give land to developers to sell extremely overpriced two bedroom boxes that sit empty.
Cost of living is out of control and our supermarket duopoly greed is hurting our people and a war with them would be extremely popular, the govt spends months saying it'll do something major doesn't even do the bare minimum. Another failed opportunity
Instead of spending loads on training new nurses and doctors for free we spend loads on centralizing healthcare bureaucracy. While dying people sit in beds in our ers.
Drops a CGT as soon as they start polling highly after March 15. wasted opportunity
Pm whose popularity, like way Trudeau would have gotten weed reform Says she supports drug reform in 2017, the party doesn't wrote a coherent drug policy, pm refuses to say she supports drug reform Incase it costs her a single vote but will support euthanasia, the result is pretty much 50/50 and immediately govt rules out any reform desire weed reform being popular with half the country. Another cynical wasted opportunity and if you look at the weed industries around the world, one that is leaving NZ behind. Failure to get any drug reform from this govt is shameful.
Instead of things on housing,cost of living , health, things people actually vote labour for we get hate speech laws, woke extremists running an anti terrorist unit, 3 waters, centralization, more hotels, a broadcast merger, co-govt constitutional reforms and a few crumbs like wage rises, benefit rises, bland climate reforms, weak workers rights reforms and more and more unaffordable empty box apartments.
Yippie.
Then there's the off touted COVID response , the one praised for not clogging up our healthcare system…. Except…… ambulances are so busy they aren't taking calls heart attacks have 1/4 survival rate, hospitals are chocker full and ambos are just dropping patients to emergency bay and picking which ones get treated and which ones don't…. Boy seems like we just postponed the health crisis by two years and didn't do anything with the two extra years to increase health care capacity.
Thank God for vaccinations because otherwise we really would be upshit creek. Which is a credit to the govt but not increasing capacity is a discredit.
In previous elections labour used to say we'd love to do this or that if only we had a majority. Now we know they what they will do with a majority. Constitutional reforms rather than economic or housing reforms. Yay!
I hope labour wins a third term.
Not because I think they'll do anything, they ruled out anything that would get people excited, I hope labour wins a third term cos national and act would be horrifically bad for many of my friends and families living standards. Labour just won't make it much worse.
But if labour loses I hope it's a nat/nzf /act govt or nat/Maori/act govt cos those two centerist parties would stop act and national reeking too much ruthanasia on the poor.
Hope you're right, remembering that Richarsdon was a National party MP, finding her natural home (the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers NZ party, founded by Douglas and Quigley), only after she departed Parliament.
Yes Ross, it is always easier to sit on one side throwing rocks into the kitchen.
Being able to produce change in an unstable world is harder. You did not mention 3 huge problems. Covid War Climate Change.
All we hear from National is "We could do it better and cheaper"
Righto!! Why do you think that would be? You new boss says "He would do the same"
"He would spend the same" So what exactly would change….. Tax cuts?? How did that work for 90% of us???
Oh I gedditt!! You would have a Big Daddy in charge.!! Not a "Girl"
Guess what?? He needs to do more homework. This is not a company There is a big bad world out there having an effect on us. We can't ignore that for political convenience. Most countries are struggling.
Don't forget when Labour were in opposition, they threw plenty of rocks and were going to fix the homeless issue, child poverty etc. and Kiwi build 10k houses a year, fix the state house wait list and hospital wait lists. All oppositions can promise the world as they don't have to deliver.
How is that going now that they have been in government for nearly five years?
The EU has just voted to ban diesel and electric new cars by 2035.
That's a good signal from the world's 3rd largest co2 polluter.
I can't remember what our target is.
Ad, this is what I read, published 8 hours ago.
"European Parliament lawmakers on Wednesday voted to support an effective EU ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035, rejecting attempts to weaken the proposal to speed Europe's shift to electric vehicles."
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/eu-lawmakers-support-effective-ban-new-fossil-fuel-cars-2035-2022-06-08/
They're not banning electric cars by 2035 are they Ad?
Just the way you worded your comment made me think they were phasing out EV's!
Just banning all others petrol and diesel I think.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/eu-lawmakers-support-effective-ban-new-fossil-fuel-cars-2035-2022-06-08/
That's it.
From the Shaw carbon plan we don't have a target for combustion engine vehicles. Other than the bus fleet.
Germany getting people out of their cars. But they’ve got a proper train set.
.
Millions of Germans are expected to take advantage of a summer of cheaper travel from next month under government plans to boost public transport use and give financial relief to consumers facing a cost of living crisis.
A €9-a-month ticket scheme is to be introduced from 1 June allowing travel on all modes of city and regional transport. The ticket will apply nationwide and will be available for three months until the end of August.
[…]
The cost of the ticket is a fraction of the normal cost of travel, amounting to around a sixth of the price of the cheapest monthly ticket available for Berlin’s central zones.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/20/germany-public-transport-boost-9-euro-month-ticket
Looks like it's on everything except their cool fast trains.
An unforeseen consequence.
https://twitter.com/taxevaderism/status/1532728239327744001
Is everyone comfortable that around 20 people are dieing from Covid 19 related illness each day? That' over 100 deaths per week and the way its going looks odds for over 5,000 by years end. The business lobby won and the old, infirm and (probably) poor lost. I'll still vote Labour but when backbone was needed they didn't stand up for their people – it's a sore point for me and whilst I think that overall Covid was handled really well if we get to the next election with 10,000 dead from Covid it will be hard to use the handling of the pandemic as a reason to vote Labour. .
I don't think anyone is "comfortable about it". Certainly still very concerned about the vulnerable around me.
Once omicron was in the country, and everyone that could, or would be, was vaccinated, it is hard to say what else could be done. It is doubtful if enough people would have supported further lockdowns to make them effective. As we could see at the end of the last Auckland lockdown.
Even China's draconian lockdowns are leaking. With pretty dire results in areas with around 60% vaccination rates.
Keeping covid out until we had 95% vaccinated, has saved thousands of lives, compared with countries that didn't reach those levels before opening up.
One thing that was conceded to business, which may have slowed the spread more, is the required length of self isolation. Ten days, not seven, would have accorded more with the probability of being infectious. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/02/17/1081510375/isolation-testing-omicron-infection
Interesting interview Jamie McKay had with soil scientist, Doug Edmeades. Some main points:
1- Farmers need to realise urea isn't the best source of nitrogen, clover pasture is. Emades believes growing good clover pasture has become a lost art.
Yeah, but urea gets a hell of a fast result even though much is lost into the atmosphere. And…I hate clover pasture, as anyone who has lifted and stacked clover hay bales will attest to.
2- Soil does not produce nutrients, so fertiliser is a must. In the 80s when many farmers cut back on fertiliser, those who continued fertilising came out of the then farming slump in a much better position. When you use less fertiliser you need to reduce your stock numbers.
3- Farmers use too much phosphate. That's a problem in NZ. I used bat guano for a few years. The phosphate reading when taken was off the charts. In alternative medicine, excessive phosphate is considered a cause for cancer and other diseases.
Now for the contentious issue – Methane .
Quote:
''Yes, ruminants produce CH4. Yes it is a greenhouse gas. Yes it may be possible to come up with interventions to reduce emissions from the animal.
BUT! Let me explain.
Methane is short-lived in the atmosphere. It hangs around for about 10 years before it is converted to CO2. For every unit of carbon the animal emits as CH4 it must ingest the same amount of carbon from its plant-based feed source, which, remember, comes initially from the CO2 in the atmosphere.
From the animals perspective every bit of carbon it emits as methane it mopped up as carbon in its feed. The animal is both the source of the carbon in methane and it is also the sink for the equivalent amount of carbon in CO2. In this sense the carbon-methane cycle: methane-to-CO2-to-forage-plants-to-animals-to-methane, is a closed cycle.''
Dr Doug Edmeades, MscHons, ONZM (Services to Agriculture), is an independent soil scientist based in Hamilton. He welcomes feedback – doug.edmeades@agknowledge.co.nz
In Vino has replied yesterday to some of these similar points:
''Blade – I read that crap in the local café. Utter baloney – the guy lies about methane, claims a closed system when much of his 'disappearing methane' converts to carbon dioxide, and peddles a load of wishful garbage.
He claims that 'methane is gone in ten years.' If I remember correctly, that approximate figure is its half-life. And what is the point if farmers are replenishing it with a new full amount every year? No mention of methane being up to 60 times worse that CO2 as a heat-retaining gas.''
One-eyed, wishful drivel.
My point here is, and has always been, we don't see enough Edmeades in the media because they have issues with some mainstream narratives on climate change.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/the-country/news/dr-doug-edmeades-should-methane-be-included-in-the-ets/2RTYB2WJE5HMP4Y2V2J4ZQ66X4/
Edmeades is a major drag on progress here in New Zealand.
You're such a wag, Blade, waving your ineptly-baited hooks around here on TS. You do get nibbles, but to those watching, you're a subtle as, well, Edmeades himself.
The methane excuse is utter nonsense. The hydroxyl argument is a red herring (note the continued fishing theme). In Vino said,
"One-eyed, wishful drivel."
Pretty fair comment, that.
This, from you:
"I hate clover pasture, as anyone who has lifted and stacked clover hay bales will attest to."
Classic, though poorly expressed, trolling clap-trap. Red meat stuff. Carelessly expressed though – "anyone who has lifted and stacked clover hay bales" won't in fact, attest that you hate clover pasture.
You might like to drop Edmeades a line yourself:-) and ask him why, if livestock methane is carbon-neutral and nothing to worry about, are farmers and their representatives etc. gleefully accepting the millions of dollars from the Government to research … methane reduction?
Perhaps you can answer that question yourself?
I don't usually respond to you, Robert, because I consider you a soundbite karen. But as you have extended yourself let's have looksee.
''Edmeades is a major drag on progress here in New Zealand.''
Based on what? Your ideology?
''You're such a wag, Blade, waving your ineptly-baited hooks around here on TS. You do get nibbles, but to those watching, you're a subtle as, well, Edmeades himself.''
I put this up for debate because it is current in the media; it stops the blog becoming an echo chamber and as I'm continually considered nuts because I don't believe in manmade climate change shouldn't I be able to defend myself? Hooks and nibbles is more to do with your mind set.
"I hate clover pasture, as anyone who has lifted and stacked clover hay bales will attest to." Classic, though poorly expressed, trolling clap-trap.
In fact it was side comment as to the extreme weight of clover bales. Some can come in at 70-80kgs wet. I can’t see you hacking that work, Robert. Again your unusual mind set on display.
''Red meat stuff.''
We can't have that can we, Robert. Although the world loves our pasture fed red meat.
''You might like to drop Edmeades a line yourself:-) ''
Why don't you drop him a line? When you don't get a reply you may like to ask yourself why?
Sorry, Blade, but you have maxed out again. I think I did a lot more hay-bale lifting that you ever did. Through all my Uni years it was my summer holiday job. 3 of us running one truck plus a loader (good boss back then – we shared driving once every 3 loads of 120 bales, but at the barn we all had to stack like hell..
My one little concession to capitalism: we were paid per bale moved. We were efficient. The few times we saw guys being paid by the hour, they were so slow that we felt nothing but contempt.
So yes – reward productivity.
Clover bales were lovely when properly dried. They hurt your thighs much less! Heavier when wet, and more likely to cook and catch alight if stacked in a barn too wet.
I picked up bales each summer starting 1965 til 1970. I had hoped it would make me a muscleman, but it just made me skinny and wiry with little, bumpy arm muscles. And it made me very fit, but I have slowly worked that off.
Edmeades as I see it does not prove a closed system for farming. His argument that farms absorb as much carbon dioxide as they produce does not counter the carbon dioxide produced as the methane magically disappears. Nor does he seem bothered about the seriously more damaging effect of methane itself.
We need to reduce methane urgently, not rabbit on about theoretically closed systems.. Edmeades appears to be aiding an interested status quo party to my mind.
Great story. I only did two seasons. And yes, I, like you, only put on arm muscle. But I was lean and mean…and bloody fit. I also saw 3 people walk off the job because they couldn't hack it. Lord knows how many would walk off the job nowadays.
Only just got through my first week. Several guys dropped out after a day or so.. Including a police trainee.
Maybe we were still under the effects that the Great Depression had on our parents… There are still plenty of good young guys (Covid has just forced my retirement from Secondary School Relief Teaching) and there are also heaps of tough-looking young guys that would not hack it.
More worrying – there are also disaffected young guys who would put that kind of effort in for a gang, but not for a standard job.
Low wage economy makes hard work a sucker's game nowadays?
And how did we end up with an unproductive, low-wage economy?
I blame Roger Douglas. I heard him say on the radio in early days that we must do all his reforms, but NOT become a low-wage economy.
Every reform he did weakened unions, and promoted a low-wage economy.
Great. Thanks a million, Rogernomes.
On second thoughts I will drop him a line with a link to this thread. Let's see what the cat drags in.
Please don't. One ignorant F-wit per thread is enough!
No abuse please. We have been warned enough.
A reply will either show him to be incompetent, or it will as Earle Kirton was fond of saying, ''be good night nurse'' for some experts on this thread.
Blade – you are the recent arrival, and the troll. Don't presume to teach us manners.
I'm teaching you nothing. Incognito laid down the kaupapa and suggested we follow it. That's what I'm doing and from my perspective KJT isn't.
You also called me a troll. You will need to back that up and show me where I'm trolling. And no, posting articles that aren't kosher from a Leftie perspective is not trolling in my opinion.
The good news for you is if I'm not booted off before hand , I will be gone for good after the next election. This will be no place for a Rightie to ply his trade. So grit ya teeth. Time will fly… and before you know it Luxon will be pontificating on the podium about how National is going to make NZ great again.
Seems Dr Edmeades' ONZM award (2013) for Services to Agriculture was well-earned.
And what Robert Guyton wrote @8.1. Sand still not bothering you? What’s your secret?
And the source of that increase in ppm methane is?
Leaky pipes,emissions from coalfields, flaring ,flatulence from Kale.
https://twitter.com/IEA/status/1523671693805473798?cxt=HHwWjMC–aXVlaUqAAAA
NZ total ch4 emissions are not even the standard error.
Indeed…and the largest source of biogenic methane (that which is part of the carbon cycle) is wetlands.
https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2020/08/13/global-methane-emissions-soaring-but-how-much-was-due-to-wetlands/
We may have too many cattle beasts but they are not the main cause of increasing atmospheric methane, indeed those studying it are struggling to account for it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/02/19/were-vastly-undercounting-methane-emissions-fossil-fuels-scientists-say/
Wetlands are interesting insofar as they have a huge ability to lay down carbon,
https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/ecosystems/gajewski.gif
There is a real complex ecosystem there,which is difficult to model,With coastal wetlands they do not produce so much CH4 due to SO2 from the sea (acid rain) from algae.
Poission is right. Wetlands will be the saving of us (those of us who live in regions where wetlands were, pre-agriculture, vast wetlands – put them back)!!
I fear another forest carbon credit debacle is in the offering…..are we to ban rice paddies next?
Probably right.Ted talks and investor conferences.
Not ban wetlands; fens, bogs, swamps and mires – make more of them!!
Many more. The benefits are enormous! Food production from wetlands is something that was once well known, but has been forgotten, mainly, til now. Eels, crayfish, mussels and more, not counting plants (watercress etc.
Best thing though, the filtering, cleansing, water-slowing effects of wetlands. Uncounted savings to all regions, subject to flooding.
But they produce methane Robert….public enemy number one!
If farmers can claim a natural methane cycle for their animals, wetland defenders can surely claim the same for their waterbodies!
Carbon sequestration by wetlands is beyond "significant". We'd be fools to talk wetlands down.
Or…
If wetlanders can claim a natural methane cycle farmers can claim the same for their stock.
Carbon sequestration on farms is significant. We'd be fools to talk food production down.
With a 500b$ foreign liability,and a country that is fiscally restrained destocking of Bovine /ovine biomass needs to be matched by the removal of equivalent human biomass from NZ.
No welfare state,15-20% mortgages,councillors reduced to minimum hourly rate for meetings only,a reduction in MP'S a population of around 1990 or less.
"…a reduction in MP'S a population of around 1990 or less."
Every cloud has a silver lining
We'd be fools not to recognise that "food production" does not equal "livestock farming as presently practiced".
It's not a binary.
There are many other food production models and many other foods.
Milk is not King!
"There are many other food production models and many other foods.:
Indeed there are….however methane accounting is not being used as a reason to remove them (at least not here)
Or we can support unsustainable consumption – it's a 'free' choice.
The half-life of methane in the atmosphere is around 9.1 years so NO it has not all disappeared in 10 years. Only half of it has converted into CO2 and water vapour – both also GHGs. After another 9.1 years another 1/4 of the original amount will have converted into CO2 and water vapour, and then another 9.1 years later 1/8 and so on. That is how half-lifes work.
The main point is that Edmeades represents about 2.5% of scientific opinion on the matter. The jury is well out against him and for good reason. There are numerous papers and reports that show that the Methane cycle is out of balance – largely caused by increased numbers of agricultural livestock. A fair summary is here:
''The half-life of methane in the atmosphere is around 9.1 years so NO it has not all disappeared in 10 years. Only half of it has converted into CO2 and water vapour – both also GHGs. After another 9.1 years another 1/4 of the original amount will have converted into CO2 and water vapour, and then another 9.1 years later 1/8 and so on. That is how half-lifes work.''
Could you please provide a link ? That's not how I understand things.
https://gml.noaa.gov/education/info_activities/pdfs/CTA_the_methane_cycle.pdf
https://www.calculator.net/half-life-calculator.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane
Thanks, Macro.
I tried to put the half-life thing to Blade a few days ago, but he ignores and pretends not to get it.
He obfuscates deliberately. That is his role.
Easy cowboy… be careful before you jump to conclusions. That half-life thing is interesting… I'll mull over it for a couple days. You should too.
If the concept of half-life will take you a few days to mull over, how long did it take you to mull over magnetism and paramagnetism? The mind boggles …
"In this sense the carbon-methane cycle: methane-to-CO2-to-forage-plants-to-animals-to-methane, is a closed cycle.''
Claptrap.
In a "closed cycle" you don't have to keep adding nutrients, including soil carbons.
N2O is even worser 🙂
"Soil does not produce nutrients"
Oh Lordy, protect is from these fools!
I wonder how anything grew at all, in the millions and millions of years that preceded the discovery of urea and super-duper phosphate?
Poor know-nothing Mother Nature!
Those sneaky forests too, must be running a black market import of fert. From somewhere.
Seabirds import fertiliser to some forests.
"Seabird colonies in New Zealand represent the rich diversity of coastal and pelagic seabirds, and are hotspots of intense nutrient and trace element cycling that provide examples of natural nutrient enrichment in terrestrial and stream ecosystems."
Quote from the first paragraph of the review conclusions.
https://newzealandecology.org/nzje/3455.pdf
isn't it cool?! So much that nature does that we would be learning from.
We are talking high density farming with no biomass accumulation as in a forest.
Talking of fert , I have tried nearly everything. Yet I've narrowed things down to seaweed, lawn clippings and salt. Salt has all the minerals many soils need due to depletion. My crops go crazy.
Could you pass this on to Rob, Weka. Best it comes from you.
You have a lawn?
Living in the Stone Age still!
No matter. Converting it into soil is something.
Keep piling on the salt, Blade.
That'll teach you.
Ignorance is bliss. Allow me to learn you, Robert.
https://www.hpj.com/archives/bumper-crops-defy-expectations-in-indonesia-s-tsunami-ravaged/article_ba79a238-af56-5ba5-98bd-eb77f7b19e3c.html
https://www.oceansolution.com/our-services-1
I will from time to time give you new knowledge. I suggest you hang off my every word and learn.
farmers can make their crops go crazy in various ways. Or they can ask nature for a helping hand and make their farms live in perpetuity once the fossil fuels and artificial inputs are gone.
Agree 100%. I'm an organic farmer. Although it must be remembered organic farming like vegan diets demands very careful management and in some cases isn't superior to conventional farming ( in my opinion). Beetroots for example have a higher nitrate content when grown conventionally. And that's what health nuts and body builders want – a high nitrate profile.
"I am an organic farmer"
You use lawn clippings primarily, as fertiliser, Blade?
How big is your farm?
A piece you may (or perhaps not) enjoy Robert.
"Aotearoa New Zealand’s pastoral agriculture has been entirely based on this through the use of grass and clover pastures. Indeed until the expansion of dairying since the 1990s, pastoral and arable farming here used no nitrogen fertilisers – all the nitrogen came from clovers biologically fixing it. This is how organic agriculture that prohibits the use of nitrogen fertilisers works. It is therefore possible to farm without using any nitrogen fertiliser at all, in contrast to lithospheric fertilisers. Yes, compromises have to be made in the production system and there can be profit implications, but, Aotearoa New Zealand farmed for nearly its entire history without nitrogen fertilisers so it is possible to do so again."
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/farmers-dont-need-nitrogen-fertilisers-at-all
Interesting expansion on what Edmeades said about clover pasture use being a lost art in NZ.
I see it as akin to our use of PKE….we waste over a billion a year (IIRC) importing a product that is effectively unnecessary. A lot of our issues can be traced back to the need to service greatly inflated land values that force everyone to maximise every possible skerrick of production to satisfy the bank.
This is not news to me, pat.
In my forest garden, I've included a wide range of leguminous plants; clovers, vetches, lupines, peas, beans, kakabeak, kowhai, tagasaste, laburnum, gleditsia, etc. to serve as nitrogen-collectors for the benefit of the other plants.
New Zealand farmers will return to plant-generated nitrates for their pastures before too long. Many already have.
I hope the warming environment doesn’t favour weevils.
"New Zealand farmers will return to plant-generated nitrates for their pastures before too long."
I expect so, though not necessarily by choice.
I'm betting farmers don't choose "the need to service greatly inflated land values that force everyone to maximise every possible skerrick of production to satisfy the bank." either.
Well the capital gains farmers, which appears to be the majority of "farm investors" these days, chose it, in the expectations of high returns on selling the farms.
Like the “house hoarders”, capital gains, not the long term future of farming, is the goal.
Hobsons choice
In old terms – all up, 10 acres. When I say lawn clippings, that also includes other green matter as well. The place was liberally coated with rock dust about 15 years ago, not so much for the minerals, but for the paramagnetism.
You fertilise your entire 10 acre block with "seaweed, lawn clippings and salt"?
Hmmm….
That's a fairly thin application of lawn clippings, Blade.
Unless your lawn is huge. What percentage of your farm is lawn? It would have to be considerable to be able to service 10 acres!
How much "salt" do you need to cover that area?
If you are using seawater, you'd need a considerable amount to cover 10 acres; how do you collect that much seawater?
You also need a huge volumn of seaweed to cover 10 acres. How do you do this?
Your farm sounds very interesting.
Question: was your rockiest Israelii?
Rock dust. Did it come from Israel?
Nope. Up North. I originally bought it from a defunct outfit in Mt Maunganui.
I now buy it from: https://environmentalfertilisers.co.nz/contact/
Check them out. Some of their organic mixes are excellent.
I also use Bio Char, and my water is vortexed using Viktor Schauberger like tech.
Pressed for time. Will answer your other questions later.
Oh – seaweed meal. Beach seaweed when I have time. You cannot harvest living seaweed.
''Unless your lawn is huge. What percentage of your farm is lawn? It would have to be considerable to be able to service 10 acres.''
About one third. Also boundary weeds and leaves etc. Bio Char is interesting. It is self perpetuating. But in some respects has been over sold. How Bio Char was used in the Amazon is still not completely understood.
''If you are using seawater, you'd need a considerable amount to cover 10 acres; how do you collect that much seawater.''
Fair questions. It's not viable for most farmers. Hence ocean solids are mixed with farm water and then spread. This dude in the clip is obviously a hobby farmer like me. Other clips will show how salt in used in bigger operation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtTFkaeJHzc
3 acres of lawn? Wow! HUGE lawn!!
What do you make your biochar from?
"The place was liberally coated with rock dust about 15 years ago"
I didn't realise you are still applying it – why is that? Does your land need a top-up?
''What do you make your biochar from?''
I buy. But for someone like you with plenty of prunings ( I would assume) you could make your own quite easily. Just remember to inoculate it.
"The place was liberally coated with rock dust about 15 years ago"
I didn't realise you are still applying it – why is that? Does your land need a top-up?
I only applied it once as stated above for the paramagnetism. People forget rock dust can take ages to be broke down by bacteria. It is not bio available for a long time. Hence by using salt I am not doubling up on minerals or applying rock dust in a different form each year.
Oh, I see. It's just that you wrote:
"I now buy it from: https://environmentalfertilisers.co.nz/contact/"
I wondered if you are still applying rock dust.
Interesting to hear about your "Viktor Schauberger like tech." for vortexing your water. Those are pretty cool technologies – where did you get yours? What form does it take? It is possible to make your own – is that what you've done. Interesting stuff, Blade. I'd like to hear more!
I see..yes, I still buy it but not for my own use at present. We are soaking dust in water and using it in compost at a rellies place. He likes to grow herbs. I have told him he may be wasting his time with rock dust. He see's thing differently, time will tell. If I'm wrong, I learn something new.
I had mine made. It's a very simple affair. Something like the copper pipe in this link.
https://www.alivewater.com/vortex-water-revitalizer-product-description
But before you doing anything like that. Do this. Buy one. The price is highway robbery. I bought a packet of them for $4, I think, a while back on Ali express. But with postage delay at present, it's better to pay the higher price.
Then you can experiment. Minimum four twists one way, four the other way. Then water a pot plant etc. Better still, drink a cup of the water and if liver isn't clean, or your body needs a clean out, you will be down with flu like symptoms.
https://nzl.grandado.com/products/vortex-bottle-connector-tornado-in-a-bottle-cyclone-tube-tornado-maker-magic-toy-9?variant=UHJvZHVjdFZhcmlhbnQ6MjA4NzA4NDk4
More questions about your organic practices, Blade – what do you do with the biochar you buy?
Blade, do you mean NaCl (sodium chloride) salt, or nitrogen, potassium, sulfur, and phosphorus (mineral) salts? Just asking because I would have thought NaCl (sea salt) couldn't be too good for your orange tree.
My small orange tree does alright with a few NPK granules springled along the drip line twice a year. NaCl would be much cheaper. Should I apply sparingly?
Don't want my orange crop to become completely deranged
I would have guessed he means unprocessed 'sea salt' – which contains a pretty wide range of minerals.
Yes, a wide range of minerals, but mostly NaCl, which is why I was asking if NaCl is good for citrus. Wouldn't have thought so – happy to learn otherwise.
No, ordinary unrefined sea salt. Trust me ,when I first heard of this I called bs. I was wrong. It's one of the most potent fertilisers I have ever used . See my links.
The ratio is three and a half litres of water to 1 teaspoon of salt, once per month.
Others use way more. Some less. I also sprinkle a handful of salt around a mature tree once a year.
The salt must be unrefined. The minerals in unrefined salt provides a degree of buffering. Refined salt is worthless and will kill your plants. It's not good for human health either. Makes a good weed killer though.
Even though I get great results, I was brought up on the notion salt is a poison for plants. I can't shake that mind conditioning. I still freak out when using salt on my plants. So I suggest you carry on with what you are doing with your orange tree and just use salt on a test plant to put your mind a ease.
Salt water from the sea can be applied directly once a month. Others suggest 1/3 sea water to 2/3 tap water.
It's true some plants are salt sensitive. Your link says that about citrus. But I have never had a problem with the above routines. However, it may be prudent to take a year off now and again.
Thanks Blade, I will try diluted seawater – certainly cheaper than Yates Thrive (Citrus & Fruit). There are, of course, a range citrus fertilisers.
Good luck. You could use a variety of fertilisers and have all bases covered.
I must warn you, if Doug Edmeades comments on this thread, and sees this he’s going to call me a quack and you a fool. Crikey, the irony.
Quote:
''Analysis of economic detriments. Dr Edmeades estimated the economic detriments as follows: "Assuming a farm (either dairy or sheep/beef) with optimum soil fertility. The science tells us that production will decline by about 5% per annum if the nutrients lost from the farm annually (i.e. in products off the farm, from leaching and runoff of nutrients, and transfer of nutrients to non-productive areas) are not replaced with fertilizer inputs. The important nutrients in this regard are P, K, S and Mg. Probitas when used as recommended contains insignificant amounts of these nutrients and therefore will not maintain the soil nutrient levels against the losses.''
https://comcom.govt.nz/news-and-media/media-releases/archive/$272,500-penalty-for-deceptive-claims-about-probitas-fertiliser
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/farmer-fined-260000-for-snake-oil-fertiliser/S7R5X57DPTAXSSOFZW23RLYONI/
ps – the above has nothing to do with salt. But I doubt that will matter.
It's not super-duper phosphate, Robert. It was meant to be spread with equal parts Dolomite. Now you know why much of our pastural land is out of kilter.
You sure learned me good tonight, Sensei!
Right. Now it's your turn to learn me something I can use.
My Bullshit detector keeps annoying me. It won't turn off.
Great trolling, I have to admit.
I wouldn't have a clue what you are talking about. Sometimes changing the battery helps.
You are watering your farm with one of those??
Now I AM astonished!
Well, In Vino only has a quarter acre. So he can spread his bs to a reasonable concentration.
Like In Vino, I think you are bullsh*tting 🙂
Then why did you feign interest and waste my time? I put some effort into those posts?
You do seem to have done some research, Blade and it shows.
Not research -practical applications. I understand. It's a little too advanced. And you cannot conceive of me doing such stuff. But Robert, you didn't fool me. Anyone could see you were stringing me along. You don't go from trolling me, to suddenly hanging off my every word.
So why did I waste my time on you? Simple. As a testament to the machination of an Immoral Lefty mindset that knows no limits. A future reference for those asking for proof about the faults of Lefties I supposedly write about.
Thankyou.
"As a testament to the machination of an Immoral Lefty mindset that knows no limits. A future reference for those asking for proof about the faults of Lefties I supposedly write about."
Juicy, crunchy word-salad!
Yummies!
It matters not what you think. Only what you wrote. I was hoping for more. But you scribbled enough.
Your detector is in fine shape, In Vino.
Ahh – my eventual conclusion is that Blade was really being truthful at
9.2.1.1.1.1 when he wrote, 'I wouldn't have a clue..'
Credit where credit's due.
Yes, he gracefully apologised in a way. Then abused me with basically the same cant on a different thread. I can't win
You shouldn't jump to conclusions In Vino….you know why
Loved it!
Our damned fine Minister of Police, in response to a sarcastic question from little David, as to how she would characterise her comment to bully boy Mercenary Mitchell as 'riding shot-gun with the boys,' she replied as pretty accurate!
Slap down!
Poto is another one of many fine Labour Government ministers.
If you say so.
"Poto is another one of many fine Labour Government ministers."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztVMib1T4T4
Goldsmith for Māori-Crown Relations would be gold – Reti could focus on Health.
Nikki Kaye incorrectly describes Paul Goldsmith as Māori defending diversity of National's Shadow Cabinet
And Collins to take over Mitchell’s SFO role – she’s all over the SFO
Are you saying Poto is only there for diversity?
Wasn’t that's what you were alluding to @10.2 Jimmy?
My recent focus has been more on the behaviour of opposition MPs – mostly the Nats, but also (since November 2020) all those new ACT stars.
link broken
Sorry about that Incognito, and thanks.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/26-11-2021/the-five-most-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-days-in-recent-national-party-history
P.S. Here’s another, by Henry Cooke at Stuff.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300464539/four-years-of-opposition-national-partys-years-of-shame-blamed-on-lightweights-and-personal-ambition
What’s a blow to Apple is good for Apple.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/468734/eu-agrees-to-single-mobile-charging-port-in-blow-to-apple
Nek minit, a whole new set of lovely iphones for people to upgrade to. Make it right to repair Brussels and then I'll be impressed.
although the OS and software is the sticking point.