It came to me overnight. No drugs, no alcohol, so it must have been the cheese.
The answer as to who NZF will choose for Government is both. No wait and keep reading. For one half of the term NZF goes with National, and then for the other half of the term he goes with Labour/Greens.
See my estimate is that the 7 year itch needs to be adjusted into NZ Government years (what will become known as the NZGY): One and a half NZGYs is equal to 7 human years.
And so with the honeymoon is over, and everybody is fighting over who is the favourite child, it’s separation time and you need to find a new significant other. Luckily in NZ this time we have a spare. Now there are not many electorates around the world who plan so well.
As to the sequencing, well that something that I hope will come to me after tonight’s bout of dreaming.
The “Peters Deal” has already been made. It requires that John Key, newly stripped of his titles, returns to Parliament to play the role of caddy to Winston, as the new PM strides about the Beehive dressed in plus-fours and spats, swinging a flanged niblick at politicians from all parties, foolish enough to venture onto the “Links” as Winston calls what were previously known as the Halls of Power. “It’s a simple and straightforward game”, quipped Peters at his first press conference as Prime Minister, clipping Key behind the ear for a momentary lapse of concentration and also for fun, “the aim being to belt these useless sods into the Joyce Hole with as many swings as I choose. Yes, my caddy “Jonny” was reluctant to take the role, but given what I’ve got on him, he had no choice, and certainly, I am enjoying the sound of his constant whining. The golf bag I have him carrying is loaded heavy with full bottles of wine from his own vineyard – rubbish I won’t be drinking, but then, neither will he!”. Prime Minister Peters said he’d be needing a course of Botox shortly, as the muscles in his face responsible for his trade mark grin are beginning to fibrillate from constant use.
Going at full power Robert G. Please hurry with the next episode. I feel like the eager USA residents waiting for the boat from UK for the next instalment of Charles Dickens’ Little Nell.
The Q&A panel suggested there should be set procedures for MMP party negotiations once all votes are counted. After all we should be better at it after 21 years of MMP one participant claimed. For example Russell Norman suggested that the party with the most votes lead initial negotiations rather than have a minority party manage “bids” from two large parties.
So what ideas can be generated here, in this forum, to improve the status quo?
What does that even mean? NZF policies are all going to be enacted by the new Parliament?
The problem with having journalists interview one another is that none of them are particularly intelligent or insightful. That’s why we end up with these trite fortune cookies instead.
Dont buy into that tail dog crap. The negotiations look fine its about giving the country the nearest policy match that we voted for. It is quite proper that the smaller parties should gain this influence thats why we have mmp
Exactly. We have MMP so that the majority of people have a say rather than being ruled by a minority as happened under FPP and which, seemingly, National and the journalists want us to return to.
The only reason Peters is a problem is because the media gives him additional power and then Peters plays them. If the MSM were reporting to inform the public instead of being circus promoters and entertainers then we’d have a process that served us better.
The problem is the media saying there is a problem.
I’ve seen and heard so much stuff about Peters “holding the country to ransom” and implying he is doing terrible things.
I thought he was doing what he has to do.
And I am fairly certain that whatever is being said behind closed doors isn’t out here. So how can he be judged on that? At this stage judging him on policies we say are terrible is rubbish. He fairly got to that position with those policies. Like National and Labour got to their positions with policies some say are crap, destructive and dumb.
IMO Peters (historically) has been a big part of creating this situation, so I’m not that sympathetic to him personally (I rate him as one of the main reasons why we have a bastard version of MMP rather than a representative one). The MSM is out of control. They’re all power mongers.
I’m not convinced there is anything significantly wrong with the conventions on how coalitions are formed though. I’m also not convinced that rules would force power mongers to behave better, or at least that this is the best way to get power mongers to behave better.
For many, including the panel, the tail wags the dog.
Funny how all these right-wingers who are supposedly so familiar with how negotiations work in the private sector are suddenly horrified that one party to the negotiations might choose to exercise whatever leverage it has and somebody needs to do something about it. Harden the fuck up, you pathetic whiners.
“Funny how all these right-wingers who are supposedly so familiar with how negotiations work…”
Since when was Russell Norman (who made the suggestion) a right-winger?
If Norman’s idea was followed this time, NZF would negotiate with National first and only talk to Lab+Greens if they couldn’t reach an arrangement with the Nats. They wouldn’t be able to weigh up different options and it seems to me that if they did move on to the “second choice’ negotiations they would have less leverage as that team would know the small party had used up its other option (while they would still have plenty of leverage in the first set of negotiations), so that would distort things somewhat.
Personally, I don’t see a big problem and I’d be fine with them taking more time. I think Peters has created a perception of being a bit of a demagogue and a rogue, but presumably he’s learnt from his previous coalition experiences and he seems keen to handle things differently from 20 years ago. If anything, I think he’s rushing it this time. I can see an agreement in principal being reached by Thursday, but not an actual coalition deal. Confidence and supply may well be on the cards.
I can see an agreement in principal being reached by Thursday, but not an actual coalition deal. Confidence and supply may well be on the cards.
If I was betting person that would be my choice. The fact he is adamant an agreement can be reached by Thursday suggests to me he has already made up his mind to go with C and S. The question is, will it be with National or Lab/Greens? No bets on that one.
Let elected representatives decide how they’ll represent their constituents in whichever way they choose. The “problem” with the status quo is impatience.
Who’s going to police Russel’s attempt to legitimise the “moral mandate”?
It would only need a simple signal from the Governor-General, within a timetable saying they had x days for the highest -polling party to propose a government, after which it goes to second place to have a go within x days.
Why should any party be given negotiating privileges not given to all the other parties? Governing is about managing a variety of competing demands. I think the first grouping to show they can come together for a majority, in a completely unstructured negotiating arena, is genuinely the best outcome for the country. Put any preconditions on that and the chances of a not-the-best outcome increase.
Yeah, I was surprised to see Russel Norman promoting the idea of privileging the party with the most votes. It would reward National for cannibalising its potential coalition partners and encourage Labour to do the same. Strictly a proposal for FPP enthusiasts, I would have thought.
In Negotiations with big countries like China or USA, tiny NZ manages to gain some advantages but the tail waggers would argue that NZ should jolly well sit down and do what those big countries dictate. Small players have no rights!
I heard the all white male panel wanting rules for how to talk to each other.
What a bizarre concept. It really is simple.
After the election parties approach each other and have a conversation. This is called “talking”. Then if they want to, they raise the level of the talking to negotiation. Negotiation is talking with a view to making an Agreement.
WHy is this so hard? I suspect part of the problem is having an all male, white panel for a start.
“After the election parties approach each other and have a conversation. This is called “talking”. Then if they want to, they raise the level of the talking to negotiation. Negotiation is talking with a view to making an Agreement.”
That’s pretty well it, like minded parties will have more in common and commit sooner to negotiations.
The J Key trained media is PATHETIC, has no idea about how to deal with the outcome of the election and has no info to pass on so just makes stuff up, surmises and in some cases tries to influence negotiations towards their beloved party.
For nine long years national have unfunded and under valued our schools and educators.
Schools have been struggling and asking for change for years, but national have not listened, rather they have done what ever they want to do and to hell with how our educators feel about it. NewsRoom have published an article today about it.
The value of education in any society is enormous, education lifts people out of poverty, reduces crime, educated people raise economies and save lives.
One of the greatest gifts we can give children is to help them feel valued and important, a way to do this is through education. But if we aren’t valuing our educators and schools, how is that making our children feel? If educators are underpaid and overworked and not even listened to, then the whole education system suffers.
Living in hope for change and support in our education sector, one thing is for sure all the opposition parties value education, educators and kids, that gives me hope.
In the meantime, if you are able, rock on down to your local school and get involved and volunteer. The rewards are enormous, and it helps to bring communities together and saves lives.
NZ1st, Labour and Greens all want change in our education system, so do voters, more voted for education changes than keeping the system as it is.
Three more sleeps, we need a win for the kids of NZ and those that educate them.
It will be an enormous task to make the changes to our education system which need to be made.
I fear the horse has bolted on having a society which sees learning and teaching as anything more than a paint-by-numbers consumer exercise. That means the focus is on peripheral consumer views of the issues to do with schooling, like teachers’ pay.
Valuing teachers and schools is critical but the vital changes need to be in the acceptance of the essential notions about learning and the paramountcy of those. Arriving at the point by saying that ‘teachers are important’ is putting the cart before the horse.
Totally agree with you Pete about it being an enourmous task. But the upside is, teachers will probably leap at the chance to be heard and involved, am sure there won’t be a lack of enthusiasm in brainstorming any changes 😀
Like Douglas and Richardson’s reforms it will take decades for anyone to reverse the damage the blind following of the business model has done to Tertiary and the blind desire to churn out little cogs in businesses wheels has done to Schooling. So many people wanting to impose their education system on generations that might as well live on a different planet by comparison.
Cinny @ 4. There is a good Education column, “Teachers fight to fix education system” by Teuila Fuatai on Newsroom.
““National standards, allowing charter schools in, removing incentives for 100 percent qualified teachers in Early Childhood Education, not adequately funding support staff, constantly cutting back on the operations grant – all these things all point in the same direction: that the system has an escalating crisis that needs to be fixed,” he says.”
Not a moral right to govern.
Jack Vowles
Professor Jack Vowles is in Victoria University of Wellington’s School of History, Philosophy, Political Science and International Relations.
‘A party ‘winning’ with a little over 44 percent of the votes cannot reasonably claim a moral right to govern: at best being the plurality winner designates being the first in the queue to seek that role. This advantages National. But stability and durability of a coalition or other government arrangement is enhanced by ideological proximity and congruence between the partners. This advantages the centre-left combination of Labour, New Zealand First and Green. A majority is 50 percent plus one. In 2017, as at every election since 1996, New Zealand has collectively continued to reject the option of having a single-party majority government.’
“Until now we’ve had the world gate-crash our party. But now it is time to make it work for us.
Let’s design our country to make it better for us. Bring in the people by all means but send them to where we need them. Let’s not give them what they need from us so easily.
People are lining up to come here because we are the last paradise on Earth.
Our small population is our winning card. Let’s not lose that.
Everything we do we must ask ourselves this question: Will this make our country better for those living in it now?”
Nice big swinging arm movements there.
The project that I am in has approximately 65% foreigners, and would not have been possible without them.
The suburb of another project I worked on was revived with fresh immigrant capital over a decade.
The town with my holiday home has been transformed for good with foreigners choosing to live and invest here.
Our immigration settings should always be up for debate, but it is not helpful for Duncan Garner to base the immigration debate on ethnicity.
I posted about this last night.
I agree with your summation. We need an intelligent discussion about immigration, identity and infrastructure.
Duncan Garner has written an article backing Winston on immigration after his experience shopping in Kmart.
It has provoked a lot of criticism and support on Stuff and twitter.
Bradbury also writes this article
‘Why we urgently need to investigate Chinese influence over National’
‘The shocking reality that the National Party is little more than a front for Chinese business interests demands far more attention than it gained…
New research paper lays bare China’s influence campaign in New Zealand
Concerns raised over political donations and directorships offered to former ministers and relatives
Chinese-owned New Zealand dairy farms said to possibly being used to test advanced missile technology’
The only good thing you can say about Garner is that he does his own shopping. George Bush Senior lost masses of votes when he was shown shopping (playing the common man) at a supermarket during the 1993 campaign and being amazed at how the product scanners worked….clearly it was the first time he had stepped inside such an establishment.
Mass immigration is a mixed bag; upside is growth, diversity, investment and cheap labour; downside … ask Maori. There are two narratives here and most people experience a mix of both.
True there is a real difference; European colonisation was largely the outcome of the massive disparity of industrialisation and technology in that era, and a with this a sense of entitled superiority which enabled them to project and impose on indigenous peoples around the globe. In many ways the British Empire was a peak version of the old patterns of history, wars, migrations and displacement being an ancient story; although the sheer geographic extent of it was unprecedented.
Colonisation in Aoteoroa came towards the end of that period, and followed a somewhat different pattern to say India or China. Here the vast majority of ordinary immigrants were escaping very poor prospects to build themselves a better life. They endured awful, dangerous journeys in the hope of a fresh start. While of course the elites plundered NZ and extracted as much wealth as they could in the usual fashion of Empires; over time something else happened … a whole new society dominated by sheer numbers of Europeans and their cultural habits arose to almost (but not completely) supplant what had existed before.
While for example the local peoples of Africa, India and China remained dominant, in the Americas and Australiasia they did not, with colonisation culminating in the physcial, economic and cultural displacement of indigenous peoples almost everywhere.
Colonisation is an essentially extractive process, a giant wealth pump that siphons resources back to the elites at the centre of empire. Immigration is the movement of peoples, usually to either escape active persecution, or to seek a better life elsewhere; this being an ancient feature of human life for probably millions of years.
Yet ultimately the end result can be very similar; in 1840 Maori were still by far the dominant population and few who signed the ToW could have imagined that within decades they’d be fighting wars to defend what remained of their land rights, or that by the turn of the century the Australian phrase “smoothing the pillow of a dying race” would enter the lexicon of their experience.
Already it impacts our elections, much of provincial NZ moved distinctly left, while Auckland now some 26% Asian/Indian, voted solidly for the status quo. Already on both sides of the Tasman there are real concerns around the CCCP’s projection of not so very soft power into our political systems.
That has to be Garner’s core question; where are we going? Because there really is no upper limit to the number of people from all over the world who would like to immigrate here. It’s not unrealistic to imagine a New Zealand in our lifetimes with a population exceeding 10 million; consisting of maybe 1m Maori/Polynesian, 3m Caucasian and another 6m from Asia.
Nothing inherently wrong with this; but I find it hard to imagine such a change will have zero political and social consequences.
The mindset of a colonists and an immigrants are almost the opposite of each other. One comes to squash existing peoples the other to join. Quite different. The average settler was extractive not just the colonising elites. i don’t buy the innocent running away from exploitation so ended up exploiting others line.
I understand the fear people have about asians taking over but they arent and won’t imo not while the euros are dominant.
The mindset of a colonists and an immigrants are almost the opposite of each other. One comes to squash existing peoples the other to join. Quite different.
[Citation needed]
I understand the fear people have about asians taking over but they arent and won’t imo not while the euros are dominant.
Fake news buddy – do you know what opinion means? You may cling to others analysis like a child to apron strings but I chose to create my own opinions from all that I read and learn. Perhaps that is the difference between man and machine – a basic fact.
One comes to squash existing peoples the other to join.
A good distinction; I’m sure that was the experience of Maori during the late 1800’s, but it’s harder to know if it was the intention of the hundreds of thousands of very poor Irish, Scottish, Welsh and others who made perilous journey in tiny ships to the most remote land on the face of the earth … to ‘squash the Maoris’.
I’ve read stories of families who’d hold a wake for those departing, because effectively they’d never be seen or likely heard from again.
Now I agree the elites certainly arrived with a different mindset; but they were always a tiny minority. The vast majority were very ordinary immigrants who where effectively just displaced peoples themselves and arrived with no more intent than to escape the colonisation they’d already lived through.
We have our stories too.
And yes the euros are numerically dominant over the whole of NZ at the moment, but barely so in Auckland. And within a few decades Maori/Polynesian/Euro might well be a minority.
Again if you asked all the Kaumatua who signed the ToW in 1840 did they want within 60 years for their mokopuna would to be reduced to a marginalised minority in their own land … I think most would have said no. And would that have made them all racists?
Yes it was a difficult journey to escape persecution and they came to a land denuded of indigenous people and culture. All they could do was take up the plough after putting the gun down, to make the land productive so that their family could thrive. Better than letting it waste and spoil. /semi sarc ☺
As you may recall, I have an ‘adopted’ Chinese son. He’s now an airline pilot in Xian City, flying 737’s four times a week on a triangular night route. He started as the orphaned son of rice farming peasants and has done well. It took time to get to know each other, but a shared interest in aviation and scary youtube videos gave us a lot in common. 🙂
He already had an anglicised first name and when he asked us a few months back for permission to use my surname as well … because he regarded us as his second family … I was remarkably moved.
Conversations with him could be unsettling though. Flying over the vast apparently empty expanses of Australia while he was training here, it seemed to him that it was very much underutilised. He was very clear that lots of Chinese could transform it all into much more productive uses rather than let it ‘waste and spoil’. /Not sarc at all.
Conversations with him could be unsettling though. Flying over the vast apparently empty expanses of Australia while he was training here, it seemed to him that it was very much underutilised. He was very clear that lots of Chinese could transform it all into much more productive uses rather than let it ‘waste and spoil’.
“The mindset of a colonists and an immigrants are almost the opposite of each other. One comes to squash existing peoples the other to join.”
True, but there is a third dynamic here. We have a neoliberal internal government that has an imperialist mindset and is in charge of immigration policy. So this isn’t simply about what immigrants want when they come here, it’s about who is choose who gets to come, how they come, and why.
“I understand the fear people have about asians taking over but they arent and won’t imo not while the euros are dominant.”
I don’t want to focus on Asians, for obvious reasons, but afaik if you increase a population fast enough from immigration then the culture of that society will change. The issue here is whether that matters, not that it’s not happening.
Where I live the immigration issues are from Europeans, Brits and Americans. And Aucklanders. /shrug. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t some serious racism issues in NZ around Pākehā fears of Asians, but I think it’s a mistake to work on that being the *only problem here.
Yes of course you are correct. Same here. Part of the issue for me is pulling all the individual strands out – a big poster would be good. Immigration, foreign ownership, refugees, cultural solidification and openness, racism, names of things, infrastructure, city verses country, home ownership, wages, neoliberalism, and so on
There probably are some people who have a fear of Asian culture taking over the dominant English culture.
That’s not wholly unreasonable; after all is this not exactly what Maori have been saying for the past hundred years or more?
No culture is all good or all bad, they’re all a random mix of social habits that arose from the accidents of history and geography. Each has strong points, and each has less attractive aspects. Typically we like to be proud of what we’re good at, and have massive blind spots around the rest.
And when we look at an outsider culture we tend to be most irked by their blind spots and weaknesses, and much slower to appreciate what they do well.
Because most people are very change resistant the process of getting used to each other, building on our strengths and discarding our failings is a slow process that cannot be easily rushed.
Exactly … it’s not immigration that is the problem. We are ALL immigrants of one sort or another. But the nature and rate of that immigration can easily change a society in ways people are not ready for, nor desire.
Going back to the Maori experience; many of the very early European arrivals (prior to 1840 most actually arrived from America), integrated very tightly with the Maori iwi they encountered. From the Maori perspective this was not a problem at all; indeed many rather valued their ‘white Maori’ because it facilitated economic and political opportunities.
And it shouldn’t be forgotten that Maori and Europeans have intermarried at remarkably high rates; that while Maori and Europeans maintain quite distinct cultures at a personal level there is a huge amount of cross-over.
Now if hypothetically Europeans had arrived at a relatively low rate during the 1800’s, and most had continued to integrate into Maori society as the early pattern indicated … the entire question of ‘colonisation’ would never have occurred.
An imperfect example might be to point to the Samoan/German experience … while it clearly started out as colonisation, in the aftermath of WW1 the rate of immigration slowed dramatically, and the two populations then had time to successfully merge into a distinct culture of it’s own.
If your definition of ‘assimilation’ is based on your experience of euros demographically overwhelming maori, then absolutely. The idea that Maori should all become ‘well behaved brown skinned Euros’ is of course repugnant.
But over time distinct cultures that flourish side by side, DO influence each other, and intermarriage DOES generate whole new patterns. In the long run both cultures finish up the stronger for it, initially separate and ultimately as something new.
Actually, I don’t think it’s the fact of there being self checkouts that is KMart’s problem – it’s that there are not enough of them.
they do still have some person operated checkouts, and some staff overseeing the self checkouts.
the queues at St Lukes’ Kmart the last few times I’ve been there were horrendous. At first I thought it was because of a sale.
Basically, if they are selling that much stuff, to that many people, they need more checkouts – and that would require more money spent on checkouts, and more staff to over see them.
Basically, if they are selling that much stuff, to that many people, they need more checkouts – and that would require more money spent on checkouts, and more staff to over see them.
Bomber Bradbury’s analysis is excellent. and Bomber is spot on there-nicely observed.
Nah. Bomber’s being as much a useless donkey dick as Duncan Garner.
Here’s Bomber.
he’s (Garner) trying to articulate the frustration many Aucklander’s feel at the cramped infrastructure groaning under the weight of a surge in immigration numbers and the total inability of Government to show any leadership by properly funding the migration growth which they are promoting.
I’ll spell this one out.
There is crap infrastructure and there is immigration. The insidious and unspoken line (it’s common enough and embraced by NZ Labour among others) is that immigration is somehow responsible for the infra-structure being crap…and for it getting getting more crap.
But it’s not.
The infra-structure is crap because successive governments have neglected it. Infra-structure is crap because of bad management; a failure on the part of the politicians who presume to control and manage such things.
But hey. Let’s point the finger “over there” at past and present immigrants instead, some of who could have been offered very good jobs laying in and maintaining all that infrastructure that successive governments have paid fuck all attention to (beyond flogging bits to private concerns that could extract massive profits off the back of steady deterioration).
And as a footnote not an aside, you may or may not have noticed that proposed immigration settings are set along lines of class (ie, huge bias against low skilled or poor immigrants)…which kind of defeats the purpose (if such a purpose exists) of getting basic infra-structure up to scratch.
I agree that lack of planning for infrastructure is not the fault of immigrants. It’s also true that there are natural limits to growth, and there is a relationship between the number of people and what can support them in the physical world and whether that is problematic.
There is crap infrastructure and there is immigration. The insidious and unspoken line (it’s common enough and embraced by NZ Labour among others) is that immigration is somehow responsible for the infra-structure being crap…and for it getting getting more crap.
No it’s not.
The point is that the immigration hasn’t been planned for and the necessary infrastructure built. Then there’s the influence it has on wages – you know, the sub-par wages we have because there’s so many people being imported by businesses specifically to keep wages down.
In other words, the cost of the immigration hasn’t been covered.
Garner and Bradbury seem to skip past who creates the pressure on the infrastructure which is not the immigrants.
Remember the guy who came in on the Investment visa? Was going to build that hotel in Epsom? After 5-10 years has not? Now, how hard to have in place a law that says if you do not do what you promise you forfeit the money you had to bring in. It goes tot he Govt coffers and you get PR or Citizenship rescinded. That would be easy if there was political will. BUT it happens a bit.
Secondly, we have the kiwifruit industry brazenly not giving migrant workers contracts and paying under minimum wage (over 50%) of them. That is deliberate law breaking to take advantage of vulnerable people seeking a better life. It is also interrupting the blessed market the right loves SO much. IF there are not enough workers, wages should go up under market forces.
Instead they are deliberately driven down. Single people on benefits would DO seasonal jobs IF
1. The pay was better
2. They could get straight back on a benefit when the work finished
As long as it takes WINZ weeks or months to start paying someone coming off seasonal work it would be a foolish person who leaves it to take a short term job. When you add in the weeks or months to get back on support the real hourly rate of the seasonal work is well below $10 an hour.
“Our immigration settings should always be up for debate, but it is not helpful for Duncan Garner to base the immigration debate on ethnicity.”
Or to do so in a way that is pretty blatantly racist (I will grant him this, I don’t think he realised he was being racist. Time for him to learn though).
Individual advantages from immigration doesn’t mean that Duncan Garner’s points as displayed in Ad’s comment aren’t correct. They are valid points and need to be thought about and acted on.
The application of rational thinking should not be drowned by sentiment and past success. Now we need something different. You only have to look at the whole picture to see that.
A classic example of unfettered immigration, is the experience of the Fijian’s, in a democracy, where the immigrants end up out numbering the citizens, the migrants can set up their own political parties and win with a majority in democratic elections.
There are many other example as well through northern Africa.
Countries with relatively small populations are at serious risk from overpopulating their countries with migrants.
NZ has a very small population compared to China or India, for either or both of those 2 countries to lose 100 million, they wouldn’t even register on population numbers, but if they all arrived at NZ…….
Refugees should be the first choice of migrants to be allowed to enter NZ, a good example of this is the new Green’s member.
A leader of the Tūhoe people’s drive for self-determination, Tamati Kruger, will give the 2017 Bruce Jesson Memorial Lecture on 31 October. (Tuesday)
Tue, October 31, 2017 5:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Location
OGHLecTh (102-G36)
Corner of Princes St & Waterloo Quadrant
The University of Auckland
The lecture, at the University of Auckland, will be a historic opportunity for Tūhoe to explain their philosophy of Mana Motuhake/Self-Determination to a national audience, and to report on how the approach is working out in practice since the iwi signed a settlement with the Crown in 2013.
The settlement transferred management of the Tūhoe homeland in the former Urewera National Park to a new entity Te Urewera, which Kruger chairs, run jointly by the Crown and Tūhoe.
It also agreed in principle that Tūhoe should run its own social services, including healthcare and education, for its own people.
So far Tūhoe has opened a health clinic at Taneatua and plans two more, it runs youth and counselling services, offers educational scholarships, and is becoming involved in wider educational and social services.
Tāmati Kruger was educated at Victoria University in Wellington, where he also tutored in te reo Māori and was involved in the early days if the Te Reo Māori Society in the 1970s.
He was the chief Tūhoe negotiator in the settlement process and also chairs the tribal body Tūhoe Te Uru Taumatua.
The lecture will be held at the University of Auckland and you can register here.
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October 2017
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A video of Lisa Marriot’s 2016 lecture, ‘Are we all equal in NZ?’, is here.
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Twitterfinger J. Putinpussy barfs up yet another obstacle to actually getting anything done. By picking a fight with someone he really needs onside, but has zero leverage over.
You mean he has no strategy! Simply reacts in a vengeful way… Based on all of the evidence of Trump’s first nine months in office, it’s impossible to conclude that he has any sort of comprehensive strategy or theory of the case. He acts (or reacts) and sees what happens. There’s no bigger plan that we’re not privy to. There’s really no plan at all.
Loved this Tweet from Corker in response: “”It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning,” “
Well that is certainly true! Executive orders is about all that has been achieved and even then may are subject to litigation. I can’t say the “beautiful, and wonderful” Tax plan has much hope of success either when the populous wake up to the realisation as to who are the ones going to benefit… and it certainly isn’t them!
The stacking of the EPA with Climate denialists is unfortunately having an effect, and the run down of funding in social services and eduction, and FEMA. The flow on will be increasing dissatisfaction and resentment to the administration and they will have a very difficult job at re-election in 2018 and almost no hope in 2020.
A recent poll has the Chump on only 24% approval rating and even 33% of Repugnents disapprove as well.
The big thing they’ve achieved is stacking the courts. McConnell refusing to confirm Obama appointments left a huge backlog of vacancies that they’ve been fairly quickly filling with Heritage Foundation recommendations.
President Caligula, and no one in GOP has the stones to hold him accountable.
President Trump told the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Seema Verma to deny a request from the Republican-controlled state of Iowa to fix their health-care marketplace, according to The Washington Post.
According to the Post, Iowa officials sought for months to get federal permission to fix health insurance markets in their state, but they were shut down by Trump administration officials.
Critics of the president say Trump’s unusual move is a part of the administration’s effort to undermine ObamaCare
We have unemployment in NZ and under-employment too in high numbers. Yet the employers can’t find retail workers with enough ability and bleat they need to bring people in from overseas because they have new ideas. This was the plaint of Massey Uni professional on RadioNZ – couldn’t find so here is Scoop on it.
“There is concern that New Zealand doesn’t have a strong enough talent pipeline. We definitely have skills gaps in buying, merchandising and digital, and this will only be exacerbated as retailers compete with the likes of Amazon,” he says.
“The skills and competencies required are becoming a lot more sophisticated – retailers need staff that understand how business models are changing if they are to successfully integrate their physical and digital platforms.”
This from Google:
Bachelor of Retail and Business Management … – Massey University http://www.massey.ac.nz/retail
The multi-billion dollar retail sector is New Zealand’s second-largest for employment, responsible for seamlessly and endlessly delivering goods and services to …
NZ Herald: New Zealand’s Latest News, Business, Sport, Weather … http://www.nzherald.co.nz/author/carmen-hall/
2 days ago – carmen.hall@nzme.co.nz. @ Bay_Times … Rotorua business leaders plan a national campaign to attract skilled workers. ROTORUA … NEW ZEALAND · Migrants struggling to find jobs. 12 Sep, 2017 10: …. Data shows retail spending on cards in Tauranga jumped 6.4% for year to June. ….. That was hard but I can’t imagine …
and this from USA
Companies can’t find workers to rebuild after Harvey and Irma | Don’t … http://www.sentinel-echo.com/…/companies-can-t-find-workers…/article_282d07a1-f5cc-5b...
4 days ago – More people were looking for jobs , particularly men. … Business owners say a lack of skilled workers who can pass a drug test has stalled their growth . Companies can’t find workers to rebuild after Harvey and Irma
By Danielle Paquette | The Washington Post Oct 4, 2017 Updated Oct 4, 2017
This from USA, where we seem to import ideas and policies from as we have adopted a drug testing regime which seems to be draconian and unnecessary for most employers.
Adani are virtually bankrupt and the entire thing is a scam to get money out of the Qlnd govt to prop up their failing investments elsewhere.
Tellingly none of the big banks will touch them, and the big automation player I know, who’d normally have people dedicated to winning a project of this scale aren’t bothering to waste time on it.
This week is the week we find out if the infamous Barnaby Joyce loses his job, and his deputy and a few others as well.
One decision has already been made for the One Nation party candidate Robertson, the Flat earth believer, the Supreme court found he was not eligible, ignorance is not a defense, grim times for the Turnbull Govt with only a majority of one and 20 consecutive negative polls for him, the latest one seeing him fall another 2 points
I’ve just finished filling out the 12 pages of Temporary Additional Support Re-Application paperwork, a joyful 3 monthly ritual in order to be able to pay the rent.
Anyone familiar with these forms will know about that threatening sounding Q.20 :
“You and your partner must take all necessary steps to increase income or reduce costs where possible. Please indicate where what steps you and/or your partner have taken to get other assistance, reduce costs or increase income.”
I was very tempted to write in “voted for Greens on their platform of raising benefit levels.” Would that constitute an attempt to increase income when one has no other ways of doing so?
Unfortunately I was too scared to- because even if the satire is over their heads, there is a very real fear these days that the slightest criticism against the system, and I’m implicating benefit rates here of course, will cross the desk of the wrong person ie one who could make things very difficult.
Looking forward to running the security gauntlet, and a long queue at the office, just to get the stamped receipt for said papers, then hope to god they don’t mess up again like last time. Multiply this scenario for 100s of 1000s of NZers…
Weka, you’re brave posting in forms. I did once, many moons ago and they were never seen again. Best practice these days is to hand deliver- if practically possible- physically hand them over and request a stamped signed receipt. They usually photocopy the front page and hand that back.
The annual DB confirmation paperwork can only be mailed back to somewhere in Auckland so no choice there and I’m terrified because there’s no way of knowing it arrived until a) your payments keep going in as usual or b) you get the letter saying it’s been stopped. And they wonder why the increasing rates of severe anxiety?
I used to hand deliver and get it date stamped until I got to ill to do so. So needs must. I take the view that if I post the forms and they get lost, it’s WINZ’s fault and it’s on them to sort it out. If my benefit was lapsing because of their fuck ups, then it’s time to get senior management and advocates or CLC lawyers involved. None of that is probably any less time consuming or stressful than what you are doing though 🙁
” You and your partner must take all necessary steps to increase income or reduce costs where possible. Please indicate where what steps you and/or your partner have taken to get other assistance, reduce costs or increase income.” ”
I think they cut and paste this for everything… Principals, DHBs, Tertiaries, Rape Prevention Orgs… just substitute partner
They also change the rules without feeling the need to inform their ‘clients’.
In order to receive the supported living payment (the old invalid benefit), I had to supply a medical certificate. The doctor needed to indicate how long the med cert was for, ie 2 years, five years or never. Three years ago my rheumatologist signed me off as never needing another one. However last year Winz requested a new one. When I phoned to ask why, I was told someone would call me back. subsequently I received a voicemail threatening to look into my part-time employment 3 years ago.
Apparently everyone on SLP now needs to provide a med cert every two years. Next year, at 64 yrs, I will have to provide another one. This has no useful purpose and is outright harassment.
All those who said waiting for the outcome of the special votes was a waste of time and made no difference were wrong.
Winston Peters said he wanted to wait until after the results of specials as they could change things significantly, Bill and the media disagreed, they said no significant change, however, Peters, after the release of the specials, announced that the outcome was SIGNIFICANT.
Maybe, to extrapolate, the significance indicates a more likely outcome for one side and not the other, my view is that L/G block is now in good contention, based on Peters putting so much emphasis on the SIGNIFICANCE of the specials.
Welcome to new Zealand – neo-liberal hellhole.
No wonder we have health issues in this country.
No doubt Katherine Rich pimps for these organisations.
‘Kiwi kids are exposed to 27 junk food advertisements a day, study finds.’
In a world-first study by Otago and Auckland universities, 168 children from across the Wellington region, aged between 11 and 13, wore cameras around their necks for four days, capturing what they saw every seven seconds.
In one case, a poster for Coca-Cola hung on a classroom wall. In others, marketing for sugary or energy drinks on the sides of dairies or on the ends of buses plagued their journey home.
“The consequence of that is obesity,” she said. “[Kids] are twice as likely to see junk food marketing as healthy marketing, it goes against that effort to help children maintain their weight.”
Ministry of Health statistics show 11 per cent of New Zealand children aged between 2 and 14 are obese, and a further 22 per cent are overweight.
Sugary drinks, fast food, confectionary and snack food advertisements were the most common found in the study. Product packaging was the dominant platform, followed by signs.
In an effort to reduce exposure, the researchers are calling on the incoming Government to impose a sugary drinks tax, regulate junk food marketing and impose rules that would see only healthy foods sold in schools.
They would also like to see a ban on junk food advertising in sports, such as Gatorade’s partnership with the All Blacks.’
Hidden cost of feeding grain to farm animals to hit $1.32tn a year
‘Our habit of feeding human foods, such as grain and soya, to farm animals will cost us $1.32tn (£1tn) a year by 2050 globally, according to environmental campaigners.
The hidden costs of the industrial farming system are vast, and urgently need to be brought into clear focus, Peter Stevenson of Compassion in World Farming told the Extinction and Livestock conference in London. “There’s a worrying disconnect between the retail price of food and the true cost of production. As a result, food produced at great environmental cost can appear to be cheaper than more sustainably produced alternatives.”
“Cheap food is something we pay for three times, once at the checkout, again in tax subsidies and again in the enormous clean up cost to our health and environment,” his colleague Philip Lymbery pointed out.
We are paying for soil erosion, water pollution, biodiversity loss, climate change, and a multitude of other impacts which are passed on to the public by farmers and the sector, the conference heard. For example, our current rate of soil loss costs £400bn a year globally, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has estimated that water pollution in six EU states alone costs €2bn-5bn a year; and according to the European Environment Agency the current rate of biodiversity loss is reducing global GDP by 3% every year.’…….
Every Single Piece Of Plastic Ever Made Still Exists.
……..’Because plastic lasts for so long, every single piece of plastic ever made still exists, and will continue existing for at least 500 years. To put that in context, if Leonardo da Vinci had drunk water from a plastic bottle when he was painting the Mona Lisa, that bottle would not have fully decomposed yet.
Every day, more and more plastic is produced, used and thrown away. In countries where disposable cups are made of plastic, for example, it may take only seconds for one to leave the package, be used, and end up in a trash can. So much plastic is being consumed that there is an area bigger than France of throw-away plastic swirling at all depths in the North Pacific Ocean. It has become so ubiquitous that birds are using it to build their nests.’……
Not quite true, some plastics are organically based and used in the agricultural industries, others are very susceptible to UV corrosion which do break down to their base products a bit like rusting steel.
Something that annoys me, is that everyone blames the plastic bottles for ending up in the water ways and sea, yet, the bottles themselves are not responsible, they didn’t leap out of someone’s hand and into the river, but the PEOPLE discarding them are, surly there is a degree of responsibility of humans to care for the environment by recycling and discarding in the proper manner, plastic water bottles are a very good method of hydration, they are also relatively safe and bacteria free, ideal in emergencies. Plastic bottle manufacturers recycle a very high percentage returned bottles.
If you look at some of the less developed countries, where waste disposal is non existent and the main means of disposal is to simply “biff it out the window”, there is no system for garbage collection, unfortunately the migrants from these countries when emigrating to more civilized countries don’t usually adapt to the changes and values and continue to litter as they always have, I’ve actually seen graphic evidence of this in some overseas cities in areas of particularly high migrant residents from these under developed countries.
The micro beads used in cosmetics are a real problem too, with some countries banning products containing micro beads.
NewsFlash
I remember a past Parliamenary Commissioner for the Environment Dr Williams, in 2002 praise the efforts of the Mayor of a Brazilian city for cleaning up the city and making it a people-friendly more attractive place.
Morgan Williams (ecologist) – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_Williams_(ecologist)
John Morgan Williams (born 25 March 1943), known as Dr. J. Morgan Williams or Morgan Williams, is a New Zealand ecologist and agricultural scientist who served as the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment from 1997 to March 2007. … Greening the City: Bringing Biodiversity Back into the Urban
Environment”.
I think that they encouraged people to hand in rubbish from the streets and favellas for physical, practical reward, such as food, perhaps some eggs. It made a big difference. Also they had covered bus stops made in clear plastic so people were covered and crime was discouraged. That would be much appreciated.
Curitiba – Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment http://www.pce.parliament.nz/media/pdfs/CURTIBA.pdf
On the southern plateau of Brazil one city, Curitiba, has lifted itself out of tough … Brazilian Ambassador to New Zealand and his staff for assisting with visits and complimentary visas to Brazil. … mercial competition models, separation of poli- cies from ….. Morgan. Transport corridor. Section through transport corridor (IPPUC). http://www.pce.parliament.nz/media/pdfs/CURTIBA.pdf
I think anyone who comes to this blog would be interested in this report. I urge you to read it because it deals with many things that way heavily on this country now, and might be helpful to consider points for Auckland. Probably the Auckland activist group already have many similar policies but lack the breadth of mind in the elites to effect change for the lumpenproletariat.
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
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 ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
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. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
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 ...
New Zealand Food Safety is monitoring overseas recalls of Indian packaged spice products manufactured by MDH and Everest due to concerns over a cancer-causing pesticide. ...
By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Fiji’s ranking in a global press freedom index has jumped into the top tier of countries with free or mostly free media after its government last year repealed a draconian law that threatened journalists with prison for doing their jobs. Fiji’s improvement ...
We might be in Invercargill but all anyone can talk about is Gore. Specifically, Salford Street. That’s where three-year-old Lachlan Jones lived, south of the centre of town, between the A&P Showgrounds and the Mataura River. Roughly 1.2 km away from the single level home he lived in with his ...
MONDAY I lined up the latest round of civil servants from city hall against the wall, and signalled for the firing squad to drop their rifles. I stepped up onto a wooden crate to look at the office workers in the eye. But that didn’t feel right, so I found ...
Keen hiker and second-year MSc student Liam Hewson wears two hats when he’s in the great outdoors. “The scientist in me appreciates nature and goes, ‘Oh, there’s that thing and there’s another thing,’ but then the tramper and the outdoorsy person in me thinks, ‘Cool bush.’” Born and bred in ...
After a long and illustrious career as a goal kicker, Dan Carter’s favourite way to unwind is… kicking goals. Why can’t he get enough of it? And what it’s like to watch him do it for an hour straight? A semicircle of people wielding cameras and phones has formed in ...
Dame Susan Devoy takes us through her life in television, including late night ER debriefs, her proudest CTI moment and the show she watches in secret. Quite aside from her four world champion squash titles, Dame Susan Devoy will likely go down in history as one of the best Celebrity ...
Hera Lindsay Bird reveals the best places in Ōtepoti to score more for your apocalypse-prep book hoard.Sometimes I get the feeling I’ve been killed in a car crash, and this second half of my life is just the brain unspooling itself, like one of those episodes of a hospital ...
ThreeNow’s new murder mystery series takes us on a dark, damp journey into the Australian wilderness.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. High Country is ThreeNow’s new Australian eight-part crime drama, set in a remote part of the Victorian highlands. It tells ...
Introducing a new way to read The Spinoff every weekend. After nearly 10 years of being an online magazine, we’re finally embracing the weekend liftout. Despite our best efforts to convince you otherwise, writers and editors at The Spinoff don’t work weekend. It is through the sheer power of technology ...
Tip one: let yourself be nurtured by this big old man. Tip two: don’t ask him to adopt you. So, you’ve arrived at your first session with a new therapist. He tells you to make yourself comfortable and you opt for the tweed armchair, hoping it makes you look like ...
I didn’t know books could open you back up; that there were books that stayed with you, where reading was like a chemical event. I knew nothing.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.Not too long ago, I was listening to the American ...
Former Olympic swimmer James Magnussen has already started training for the Enhanced games, though says he won’t start taking performance enhancing substances until about nine months out from the competition. The Australian world champion was the first athlete to be announced by Enhanced, but he says the organisation has had ...
Everyone thinks he’s dead. Every day they expect his body to be washed up along the coast. Most likely up Karitane way, the way the tide’s running. But nobody’ll be too surprised if his body’s never found. Even in death he wouldn’t have wished for such attention. He would have ...
Council members voted 21 to 4 in favour of Ahluwalia returning to the Laucala campus following a much-awaited meeting in Vanuatu this week. It comes as USP and its two unions — the Association of the University of the South Pacific Staff (AUSPS) and the Administration and Support Staff Union ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicola Henry, Professor & Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University Shutterstock Following an emergency meeting of the National Cabinet this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a raft of measures to tackle the problem ...
Analysis - A poll showing the opposition is more popular than the government raises questions, politicians go through their 'trial by pay rise' and a Green MP loses her cool in the debating chamber. ...
The entire stretch of Tokomaru Bay on the East Coast will be subject to a joint customary marine title for two hapū, and extending up to four miles out to sea. A High Court judge has found the two groups, who during the case settled a dispute over boundaries for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Hall, Lecturer, Media & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University A longstanding feud between TikTok and Universal Music Group seems to have finally reached an end, with both parties signing a deal that will see Universal-backed music returned to the social media ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Siobhan O’Dean, Postdoctoral Research Associate, The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney After several highly publicised alleged murders of women in Australia, the Albanese government this week pledged more than A$925 million over five years ...
Political parties have now fully disclosed the donations they received last year - with National getting more than double the cash of any other party. ...
A Pacific regionalism expert has called out New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS military pact. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard de Grijs, Professor of Astrophysics, Macquarie University Bruno Scramgnon/Pexels All systems are “go” for tonight’s launch of China’s next step in a carefully planned lunar exploration program. Placed on top of a powerful Long March 5 rocket, the Chang’e 6 ...
National returned a massive donation the day after a Newsroom story linked the donors to a property being investigated for operating unlawfully as a migrant workers’ hostel. The party’s 2023 donation filings, released on Friday, show it returned a $200,000 donation from Buen Holdings on August 23. That was the ...
Pacific Media Watch New Zealand has slumped to an unprecedented 19th place in the annual Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index survey released today on World Press Freedom Day — May 3. This was a drop of six places from 13th last year when it slipped out of its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, Political Historian and Administrator Officer, Australian Historical Association, Australian National University Australia has had its fair share of public record-keeping controversies in recent years. Some have been mere farce, as in the case of two formerly government-owned filing cabinets (containing ...
Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), a United Nations-affiliated organization dedicated to fostering peace through civilian-led initiatives, has issued a statement in response to the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. ...
A poem by Tessa Keenan, from AUP New Poets 10. Mātou These days we are a photograph; one of a farm strewn with cows that used to be bright harakeke or swamp. The kids point at it and say the sun sits behind a smudge (left by someone at Christmas); ...
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 Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber & Faber, $25)The masterful Irish writer ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. Key facts Marriages and civil unions In ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lennon Y.C. Chang, Associate Professor of Cyber Risk and Policy, Deakin University Taiwan stands out as a beacon of democracy, innovation and resilience in an increasingly autocratic region. But this is under growing threat. In recent years, China has used a variety ...
In this excerpt from her new memoir, Dame Susan Devoy remembers her turn as star contestant on the 2022 season of Celebrity Treasure Island. The most anxious time of every day was pre-elimination, when you knew this could be your final day on the show. I felt such contradictory emotions, ...
A week that began in triumph ended in an all-too-familiar disaster for the Green Party. Duncan Greive asks if there’s something in the mission that breaks its best and brightest. A long, strange week for the Green party began with a fantastic poll result. On one level this is hardly ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Vanuatu’s former prime minister and opposition MP Ishmael Kalsakau has stepped down — just two days after he confirmed he was the rightful opposition leader. Kalsakau, MP for Port Vila, confirmed to ABC’s Pacific Beat, and the Vanuatu Daily Post on Thursday that he ...
What’s to blame for the coalition’s choppy start? Six months in, and the mojo meter is in the doldrums. A new poll would put National out of power and sees its leader, Chris Luxon, sliding in popularity. How much is it about policy, how much coalition management and a perception ...
The striking report goes far beyond the proposed repeal of the Oranga Tamariki Act’s Treaty of Waitangi provision, and its impact should be felt far beyond the unique circumstances of the claim it addresses. Earlier this week, the Waitangi Tribunal released an interim report on the government’s proposed repeal of ...
The world has been experiencing a productivity slowdown, from which New Zealand has not been exempt. COVID-19 temporarily boosted labour productivity, but more recently, productivity has retreated. The overall trend since 2007 has been one of slow productivity ...
What’s more wasteful than spending $315k on syrup and machine maintenance? Trying to drum up a controversy about it.Cast your mind back to the pre-pandemic idylls of 2019. A “rat” was a disgusting rodent and not a self-administered plague test; the sixth Labour government was in power; and the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Professor of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Monash University Ken stocker/Shutterstock In the wake of numerous killings of women allegedly by men’s violence in 2024, thousands of Australians have joined rallies across the country to demand action ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Henry Cutler, Professor and Director, Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University Oleg Ivanov IL/Shutterstock Waiting times for public hospital elective surgery have been in the news ahead of this year’s federal budget. That’s the type of non-emergency surgery ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Konstantine Panegyres, McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow, Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne Amna Artist/Shutterstock One of the earliest descriptions of someone with cancer comes from the fourth century BC. Satyrus, tyrant of the city of Heracleia on the Black Sea, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Rose, Professor of Sustainable Future Transport, University of Sydney LanaElcova/Shutterstock Electric vehicles are often seen as the panacea to cutting emissions – and air pollution – from transport. Is this view correct? Yes – but only once uptake accelerates. Despite the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giselle Natassia Woodley, Researcher and Phd Candidate, Edith Cowan University There is widespread agreement Australia needs to do better when it comes to gender-based violence. Anger and frustration at the numbers of women being killed saw national rallies over the weekend and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Graham, Lecturer in Economics, University of Sydney Mark and Anna Photography/Shutterstock As home ownership moves further out of reach for many Australians, “rentvesting” is being touted as a lifesaver. Rentvesting is the practice of renting one property to live ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sukhmani Khorana, Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, UNSW Sydney Netflix The new season of Heartbreak High is garnering mixed reviews. Critics are writing about the racy story lines, comparing it to other coming-of-age series about teenage relationships and ...
Bob Carr intends to launch legal action against Winston Peters and Julie Anne Genter is facing a second allegation of bullying. Both sucked the air out of an announcement on education, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in ...
In 1995, Sally Clark went out on her own in a bold and unorthodox attempt to join an illustrious group of equestrian riders conquering the world. In the days of glovebox road maps, brick cell phones, and the hit song How Bizarre, Clark refused to follow Sir Mark Todd, Blyth ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Beaglehole, Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Otago niphon/Getty Images The number of people accessing medication for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in Aotearoa New Zealand increased significantly between 2006 and 2022. But the disorder is still under-diagnosed and ...
To celebrate the start of New Zealand music month, we look back at the best local tuneage that managed to weasel its way into Hollywood productions. There’s nothing quite like the thrilling zap of recognition when New Zealand weasels its way into a glamorous Hollywood production. Crack open a Tui ...
People trust other people more than institutions. So how can the media gain that trust through journalists without losing what’s important about the institution? Anna Rawhiti-Connell reflects on two years of curating the news for The Bulletin.Amonth ago, armed cops descended on my neighbourhood as calls to “lock your ...
Opinion: PFAS – per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances – are a class of thousands of man-made chemicals used widely in everyday consumer items such as textiles, packaging, and cookware, popular for their water, grease and stain-repellent properties. However, the very properties that make PFAS so attractive to manufacturers are also what ...
NONFICTION 1 The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson (Allen & Unwin, $37.99)’ This is the hottest book in New Zealand, number one with a bullet in its first week, selling more than any overseas title, and demand is so huge that it’s already been reprinted. A ...
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A warning – suicide is discussed in this podcast New Zealand’s own long-running soap Shortland Street doesn’t hesitate to kill off its much-loved characters. But would TVNZ dare to kill off our favourite soap? That’s the fear as times get tough in television – even though it’s been pointed out ...
It came to me overnight. No drugs, no alcohol, so it must have been the cheese.
The answer as to who NZF will choose for Government is both. No wait and keep reading. For one half of the term NZF goes with National, and then for the other half of the term he goes with Labour/Greens.
See my estimate is that the 7 year itch needs to be adjusted into NZ Government years (what will become known as the NZGY): One and a half NZGYs is equal to 7 human years.
And so with the honeymoon is over, and everybody is fighting over who is the favourite child, it’s separation time and you need to find a new significant other. Luckily in NZ this time we have a spare. Now there are not many electorates around the world who plan so well.
As to the sequencing, well that something that I hope will come to me after tonight’s bout of dreaming.
The “Peters Deal” has already been made. It requires that John Key, newly stripped of his titles, returns to Parliament to play the role of caddy to Winston, as the new PM strides about the Beehive dressed in plus-fours and spats, swinging a flanged niblick at politicians from all parties, foolish enough to venture onto the “Links” as Winston calls what were previously known as the Halls of Power. “It’s a simple and straightforward game”, quipped Peters at his first press conference as Prime Minister, clipping Key behind the ear for a momentary lapse of concentration and also for fun, “the aim being to belt these useless sods into the Joyce Hole with as many swings as I choose. Yes, my caddy “Jonny” was reluctant to take the role, but given what I’ve got on him, he had no choice, and certainly, I am enjoying the sound of his constant whining. The golf bag I have him carrying is loaded heavy with full bottles of wine from his own vineyard – rubbish I won’t be drinking, but then, neither will he!”. Prime Minister Peters said he’d be needing a course of Botox shortly, as the muscles in his face responsible for his trade mark grin are beginning to fibrillate from constant use.
Wot bout paula?
Of course there has to be a golf bag.
Robert. Robert. Will it be true? Is it credible? Hope so but what will Jacinda be doing in your dream? Surely not bagging it like Paula!
Well, she’d be really teed-off and as for the greens, it’d be rough going.
Going at full power Robert G. Please hurry with the next episode. I feel like the eager USA residents waiting for the boat from UK for the next instalment of Charles Dickens’ Little Nell.
Any handicap ratings listed in the clubhouse?–nick’s for example.
Post-Election Negotiations
The Q&A panel suggested there should be set procedures for MMP party negotiations once all votes are counted. After all we should be better at it after 21 years of MMP one participant claimed. For example Russell Norman suggested that the party with the most votes lead initial negotiations rather than have a minority party manage “bids” from two large parties.
So what ideas can be generated here, in this forum, to improve the status quo?
Why? What is the problem with how things are currently being done?
For many, including the panel, the tail wags the dog.
It’s a fukn spineless dog that can’t manage a tail.
“It’s a fukn spineless dog that can’t manage a tail.”
Expression of the day!
What does that even mean? NZF policies are all going to be enacted by the new Parliament?
The problem with having journalists interview one another is that none of them are particularly intelligent or insightful. That’s why we end up with these trite fortune cookies instead.
+111
And still none of them understand that at any time Labour or National can say no to NZF. Tail cannot wag a dog that holds its tail still.
Dont buy into that tail dog crap. The negotiations look fine its about giving the country the nearest policy match that we voted for. It is quite proper that the smaller parties should gain this influence thats why we have mmp
^^^this.
+ 100%
Exactly. We have MMP so that the majority of people have a say rather than being ruled by a minority as happened under FPP and which, seemingly, National and the journalists want us to return to.
AND that it needs to take some time.
In addition why do some people and the media think that in the past 2 weeks the parties were doing nothing?
The only reason Peters is a problem is because the media gives him additional power and then Peters plays them. If the MSM were reporting to inform the public instead of being circus promoters and entertainers then we’d have a process that served us better.
The problem is the media saying there is a problem.
I’ve seen and heard so much stuff about Peters “holding the country to ransom” and implying he is doing terrible things.
I thought he was doing what he has to do.
And I am fairly certain that whatever is being said behind closed doors isn’t out here. So how can he be judged on that? At this stage judging him on policies we say are terrible is rubbish. He fairly got to that position with those policies. Like National and Labour got to their positions with policies some say are crap, destructive and dumb.
IMO Peters (historically) has been a big part of creating this situation, so I’m not that sympathetic to him personally (I rate him as one of the main reasons why we have a bastard version of MMP rather than a representative one). The MSM is out of control. They’re all power mongers.
I’m not convinced there is anything significantly wrong with the conventions on how coalitions are formed though. I’m also not convinced that rules would force power mongers to behave better, or at least that this is the best way to get power mongers to behave better.
I didn’t see Q and A.
For many, including the panel, the tail wags the dog.
Funny how all these right-wingers who are supposedly so familiar with how negotiations work in the private sector are suddenly horrified that one party to the negotiations might choose to exercise whatever leverage it has and somebody needs to do something about it. Harden the fuck up, you pathetic whiners.
It would be funny if it weren’t important. They want rules about how to talk to other people…
“Funny how all these right-wingers who are supposedly so familiar with how negotiations work…”
Since when was Russell Norman (who made the suggestion) a right-winger?
If Norman’s idea was followed this time, NZF would negotiate with National first and only talk to Lab+Greens if they couldn’t reach an arrangement with the Nats. They wouldn’t be able to weigh up different options and it seems to me that if they did move on to the “second choice’ negotiations they would have less leverage as that team would know the small party had used up its other option (while they would still have plenty of leverage in the first set of negotiations), so that would distort things somewhat.
Personally, I don’t see a big problem and I’d be fine with them taking more time. I think Peters has created a perception of being a bit of a demagogue and a rogue, but presumably he’s learnt from his previous coalition experiences and he seems keen to handle things differently from 20 years ago. If anything, I think he’s rushing it this time. I can see an agreement in principal being reached by Thursday, but not an actual coalition deal. Confidence and supply may well be on the cards.
Since when was Russell Norman (who made the suggestion) a right-winger?
He’s a late jumper onto that particular bandwagon, which is otherwise stocked with right-wingers, and probably its least significant advocate.
I can see an agreement in principal being reached by Thursday, but not an actual coalition deal. Confidence and supply may well be on the cards.
If I was betting person that would be my choice. The fact he is adamant an agreement can be reached by Thursday suggests to me he has already made up his mind to go with C and S. The question is, will it be with National or Lab/Greens? No bets on that one.
Let elected representatives decide how they’ll represent their constituents in whichever way they choose. The “problem” with the status quo is impatience.
Who’s going to police Russel’s attempt to legitimise the “moral mandate”?
+100
Too many people with NO patience.
It would only need a simple signal from the Governor-General, within a timetable saying they had x days for the highest -polling party to propose a government, after which it goes to second place to have a go within x days.
Why should any party be given negotiating privileges not given to all the other parties? Governing is about managing a variety of competing demands. I think the first grouping to show they can come together for a majority, in a completely unstructured negotiating arena, is genuinely the best outcome for the country. Put any preconditions on that and the chances of a not-the-best outcome increase.
Yeah, I was surprised to see Russel Norman promoting the idea of privileging the party with the most votes. It would reward National for cannibalising its potential coalition partners and encourage Labour to do the same. Strictly a proposal for FPP enthusiasts, I would have thought.
Hell no. We’d never get a bloody government.
We need to let the parties negotiate first.
In Negotiations with big countries like China or USA, tiny NZ manages to gain some advantages but the tail waggers would argue that NZ should jolly well sit down and do what those big countries dictate. Small players have no rights!
Isn’t it the case, that we do..?
I heard the all white male panel wanting rules for how to talk to each other.
What a bizarre concept. It really is simple.
After the election parties approach each other and have a conversation. This is called “talking”. Then if they want to, they raise the level of the talking to negotiation. Negotiation is talking with a view to making an Agreement.
WHy is this so hard? I suspect part of the problem is having an all male, white panel for a start.
Tracey
“After the election parties approach each other and have a conversation. This is called “talking”. Then if they want to, they raise the level of the talking to negotiation. Negotiation is talking with a view to making an Agreement.”
That’s pretty well it, like minded parties will have more in common and commit sooner to negotiations.
The J Key trained media is PATHETIC, has no idea about how to deal with the outcome of the election and has no info to pass on so just makes stuff up, surmises and in some cases tries to influence negotiations towards their beloved party.
For nine long years national have unfunded and under valued our schools and educators.
Schools have been struggling and asking for change for years, but national have not listened, rather they have done what ever they want to do and to hell with how our educators feel about it. NewsRoom have published an article today about it.
The value of education in any society is enormous, education lifts people out of poverty, reduces crime, educated people raise economies and save lives.
One of the greatest gifts we can give children is to help them feel valued and important, a way to do this is through education. But if we aren’t valuing our educators and schools, how is that making our children feel? If educators are underpaid and overworked and not even listened to, then the whole education system suffers.
Living in hope for change and support in our education sector, one thing is for sure all the opposition parties value education, educators and kids, that gives me hope.
In the meantime, if you are able, rock on down to your local school and get involved and volunteer. The rewards are enormous, and it helps to bring communities together and saves lives.
NZ1st, Labour and Greens all want change in our education system, so do voters, more voted for education changes than keeping the system as it is.
Three more sleeps, we need a win for the kids of NZ and those that educate them.
It will be an enormous task to make the changes to our education system which need to be made.
I fear the horse has bolted on having a society which sees learning and teaching as anything more than a paint-by-numbers consumer exercise. That means the focus is on peripheral consumer views of the issues to do with schooling, like teachers’ pay.
Valuing teachers and schools is critical but the vital changes need to be in the acceptance of the essential notions about learning and the paramountcy of those. Arriving at the point by saying that ‘teachers are important’ is putting the cart before the horse.
Great to see your sentiments!
Totally agree with you Pete about it being an enourmous task. But the upside is, teachers will probably leap at the chance to be heard and involved, am sure there won’t be a lack of enthusiasm in brainstorming any changes 😀
Am finding out more about NZ1st MP’s and it turns out that five out of nine are teachers, this gives me hope for our education sector.
Like Douglas and Richardson’s reforms it will take decades for anyone to reverse the damage the blind following of the business model has done to Tertiary and the blind desire to churn out little cogs in businesses wheels has done to Schooling. So many people wanting to impose their education system on generations that might as well live on a different planet by comparison.
Cinny @ 4. There is a good Education column, “Teachers fight to fix education system” by Teuila Fuatai on Newsroom.
““National standards, allowing charter schools in, removing incentives for 100 percent qualified teachers in Early Childhood Education, not adequately funding support staff, constantly cutting back on the operations grant – all these things all point in the same direction: that the system has an escalating crisis that needs to be fixed,” he says.”
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2017/10/08/52023/teachers-negotiate-for-education-sector-survival
Thank you Ian 😀
Not a moral right to govern.
Jack Vowles
Professor Jack Vowles is in Victoria University of Wellington’s School of History, Philosophy, Political Science and International Relations.
‘A party ‘winning’ with a little over 44 percent of the votes cannot reasonably claim a moral right to govern: at best being the plurality winner designates being the first in the queue to seek that role. This advantages National. But stability and durability of a coalition or other government arrangement is enhanced by ideological proximity and congruence between the partners. This advantages the centre-left combination of Labour, New Zealand First and Green. A majority is 50 percent plus one. In 2017, as at every election since 1996, New Zealand has collectively continued to reject the option of having a single-party majority government.’
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2017/10/08/52205/not-a-moral-right-to-govern
Which is why we need a return to academics as experts, not former politicians and paid lobbyists
Stephanie Rodgers has had a go at this anti-immigration column by Duncan Garner.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/97625919/duncan-garner-dear-nz-how-do-we-want-to-look-in-20-years
He concludes:
“Until now we’ve had the world gate-crash our party. But now it is time to make it work for us.
Let’s design our country to make it better for us. Bring in the people by all means but send them to where we need them. Let’s not give them what they need from us so easily.
People are lining up to come here because we are the last paradise on Earth.
Our small population is our winning card. Let’s not lose that.
Everything we do we must ask ourselves this question: Will this make our country better for those living in it now?”
Nice big swinging arm movements there.
The project that I am in has approximately 65% foreigners, and would not have been possible without them.
The suburb of another project I worked on was revived with fresh immigrant capital over a decade.
The town with my holiday home has been transformed for good with foreigners choosing to live and invest here.
Our immigration settings should always be up for debate, but it is not helpful for Duncan Garner to base the immigration debate on ethnicity.
I posted about this last night.
I agree with your summation. We need an intelligent discussion about immigration, identity and infrastructure.
Duncan Garner has written an article backing Winston on immigration after his experience shopping in Kmart.
It has provoked a lot of criticism and support on Stuff and twitter.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/97625919/duncan-garner-dear-nz-how-do-we-want-to-look-in-20-years
https://twitter.com/DuncanGarnerNZ?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Bomber Bradbury’s analysis is excellent.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/10/08/why-duncan-garners-k-mart-checkout-metaphor-is-actually-delightfully-perfect/
Bradbury also writes this article
‘Why we urgently need to investigate Chinese influence over National’
‘The shocking reality that the National Party is little more than a front for Chinese business interests demands far more attention than it gained…
New research paper lays bare China’s influence campaign in New Zealand
Concerns raised over political donations and directorships offered to former ministers and relatives
Chinese-owned New Zealand dairy farms said to possibly being used to test advanced missile technology’
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/10/06/why-we-urgently-need-to-investigate-chinese-influence-over-national/
Bomber is spot on there-nicely observed.
The only good thing you can say about Garner is that he does his own shopping. George Bush Senior lost masses of votes when he was shown shopping (playing the common man) at a supermarket during the 1993 campaign and being amazed at how the product scanners worked….clearly it was the first time he had stepped inside such an establishment.
Mass immigration is a mixed bag; upside is growth, diversity, investment and cheap labour; downside … ask Maori. There are two narratives here and most people experience a mix of both.
Colonisation is a lot different to immigration. I wish we could keep the two subjects separate and I understand why allies are sought.
Colonisation is a lot different to immigration.
True there is a real difference; European colonisation was largely the outcome of the massive disparity of industrialisation and technology in that era, and a with this a sense of entitled superiority which enabled them to project and impose on indigenous peoples around the globe. In many ways the British Empire was a peak version of the old patterns of history, wars, migrations and displacement being an ancient story; although the sheer geographic extent of it was unprecedented.
Colonisation in Aoteoroa came towards the end of that period, and followed a somewhat different pattern to say India or China. Here the vast majority of ordinary immigrants were escaping very poor prospects to build themselves a better life. They endured awful, dangerous journeys in the hope of a fresh start. While of course the elites plundered NZ and extracted as much wealth as they could in the usual fashion of Empires; over time something else happened … a whole new society dominated by sheer numbers of Europeans and their cultural habits arose to almost (but not completely) supplant what had existed before.
While for example the local peoples of Africa, India and China remained dominant, in the Americas and Australiasia they did not, with colonisation culminating in the physcial, economic and cultural displacement of indigenous peoples almost everywhere.
Colonisation is an essentially extractive process, a giant wealth pump that siphons resources back to the elites at the centre of empire. Immigration is the movement of peoples, usually to either escape active persecution, or to seek a better life elsewhere; this being an ancient feature of human life for probably millions of years.
Yet ultimately the end result can be very similar; in 1840 Maori were still by far the dominant population and few who signed the ToW could have imagined that within decades they’d be fighting wars to defend what remained of their land rights, or that by the turn of the century the Australian phrase “smoothing the pillow of a dying race” would enter the lexicon of their experience.
Already it impacts our elections, much of provincial NZ moved distinctly left, while Auckland now some 26% Asian/Indian, voted solidly for the status quo. Already on both sides of the Tasman there are real concerns around the CCCP’s projection of not so very soft power into our political systems.
That has to be Garner’s core question; where are we going? Because there really is no upper limit to the number of people from all over the world who would like to immigrate here. It’s not unrealistic to imagine a New Zealand in our lifetimes with a population exceeding 10 million; consisting of maybe 1m Maori/Polynesian, 3m Caucasian and another 6m from Asia.
Nothing inherently wrong with this; but I find it hard to imagine such a change will have zero political and social consequences.
A couple of points
The mindset of a colonists and an immigrants are almost the opposite of each other. One comes to squash existing peoples the other to join. Quite different. The average settler was extractive not just the colonising elites. i don’t buy the innocent running away from exploitation so ended up exploiting others line.
I understand the fear people have about asians taking over but they arent and won’t imo not while the euros are dominant.
[Citation needed]
Except it seems that they are (see Bradbury’s Chinese Influence on National).
These are questions that need to be asked and get answered and not just dismissed by what you believe to be true.
It’s my opinion
https://theconversation.com/no-youre-not-entitled-to-your-opinion-9978
Yes I am.
Only if you can back it up and you can’t.
Not true as I have just proved.
You’ve never proved anything. You can’t back up your opinions even with sound logic never mind actual research.
Fake news buddy – do you know what opinion means? You may cling to others analysis like a child to apron strings but I chose to create my own opinions from all that I read and learn. Perhaps that is the difference between man and machine – a basic fact.
Then link to it. Backup what you say with facts, research and logic.
You’ve never, ever done that and almost everything you say comes across as you talking out your arse.
One comes to squash existing peoples the other to join.
A good distinction; I’m sure that was the experience of Maori during the late 1800’s, but it’s harder to know if it was the intention of the hundreds of thousands of very poor Irish, Scottish, Welsh and others who made perilous journey in tiny ships to the most remote land on the face of the earth … to ‘squash the Maoris’.
I’ve read stories of families who’d hold a wake for those departing, because effectively they’d never be seen or likely heard from again.
Now I agree the elites certainly arrived with a different mindset; but they were always a tiny minority. The vast majority were very ordinary immigrants who where effectively just displaced peoples themselves and arrived with no more intent than to escape the colonisation they’d already lived through.
We have our stories too.
And yes the euros are numerically dominant over the whole of NZ at the moment, but barely so in Auckland. And within a few decades Maori/Polynesian/Euro might well be a minority.
Again if you asked all the Kaumatua who signed the ToW in 1840 did they want within 60 years for their mokopuna would to be reduced to a marginalised minority in their own land … I think most would have said no. And would that have made them all racists?
Yes it was a difficult journey to escape persecution and they came to a land denuded of indigenous people and culture. All they could do was take up the plough after putting the gun down, to make the land productive so that their family could thrive. Better than letting it waste and spoil. /semi sarc ☺
As you may recall, I have an ‘adopted’ Chinese son. He’s now an airline pilot in Xian City, flying 737’s four times a week on a triangular night route. He started as the orphaned son of rice farming peasants and has done well. It took time to get to know each other, but a shared interest in aviation and scary youtube videos gave us a lot in common. 🙂
He already had an anglicised first name and when he asked us a few months back for permission to use my surname as well … because he regarded us as his second family … I was remarkably moved.
Conversations with him could be unsettling though. Flying over the vast apparently empty expanses of Australia while he was training here, it seemed to him that it was very much underutilised. He was very clear that lots of Chinese could transform it all into much more productive uses rather than let it ‘waste and spoil’. /Not sarc at all.
Interesting, good on you for that relationship.
So many people see the gap not the space. They miss infinity by only a little.
Sounds like John Key’s pronouncement that water flowing down the river and into the sea was wasted. It’s the same thinking that brought about the death of the Aral Sea.
“The mindset of a colonists and an immigrants are almost the opposite of each other. One comes to squash existing peoples the other to join.”
True, but there is a third dynamic here. We have a neoliberal internal government that has an imperialist mindset and is in charge of immigration policy. So this isn’t simply about what immigrants want when they come here, it’s about who is choose who gets to come, how they come, and why.
“I understand the fear people have about asians taking over but they arent and won’t imo not while the euros are dominant.”
I don’t want to focus on Asians, for obvious reasons, but afaik if you increase a population fast enough from immigration then the culture of that society will change. The issue here is whether that matters, not that it’s not happening.
I think it is all about the Asians actually and the fear of Asians that some euros have.
Where I live the immigration issues are from Europeans, Brits and Americans. And Aucklanders. /shrug. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t some serious racism issues in NZ around Pākehā fears of Asians, but I think it’s a mistake to work on that being the *only problem here.
Yes of course you are correct. Same here. Part of the issue for me is pulling all the individual strands out – a big poster would be good. Immigration, foreign ownership, refugees, cultural solidification and openness, racism, names of things, infrastructure, city verses country, home ownership, wages, neoliberalism, and so on
so many strands arggggg…
There probably are some people who have a fear of Asian culture taking over the dominant English culture.
Personally, I’m concerned with an excess of foreigners making the people already here even more poverty stricken. And that’s already happening.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/90260050/overseas-investment-office-approves-sharp-increase-in-foreign-land-ownership
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11883554
I’m also concerned with how many people NZ can sustainably support. We don’t know that at all and yet we’re letting in an unlimited number of people.
Valid concerns imo.
There probably are some people who have a fear of Asian culture taking over the dominant English culture.
That’s not wholly unreasonable; after all is this not exactly what Maori have been saying for the past hundred years or more?
No culture is all good or all bad, they’re all a random mix of social habits that arose from the accidents of history and geography. Each has strong points, and each has less attractive aspects. Typically we like to be proud of what we’re good at, and have massive blind spots around the rest.
And when we look at an outsider culture we tend to be most irked by their blind spots and weaknesses, and much slower to appreciate what they do well.
Because most people are very change resistant the process of getting used to each other, building on our strengths and discarding our failings is a slow process that cannot be easily rushed.
Exactly … it’s not immigration that is the problem. We are ALL immigrants of one sort or another. But the nature and rate of that immigration can easily change a society in ways people are not ready for, nor desire.
Going back to the Maori experience; many of the very early European arrivals (prior to 1840 most actually arrived from America), integrated very tightly with the Maori iwi they encountered. From the Maori perspective this was not a problem at all; indeed many rather valued their ‘white Maori’ because it facilitated economic and political opportunities.
And it shouldn’t be forgotten that Maori and Europeans have intermarried at remarkably high rates; that while Maori and Europeans maintain quite distinct cultures at a personal level there is a huge amount of cross-over.
Now if hypothetically Europeans had arrived at a relatively low rate during the 1800’s, and most had continued to integrate into Maori society as the early pattern indicated … the entire question of ‘colonisation’ would never have occurred.
An imperfect example might be to point to the Samoan/German experience … while it clearly started out as colonisation, in the aftermath of WW1 the rate of immigration slowed dramatically, and the two populations then had time to successfully merge into a distinct culture of it’s own.
There are wildly different Māori experiences that the ones you have heard of.
There is no blending into a distinct new culture – that is just another assimilation fantasy imo.
I’m not sure why you are driving down this road – i thought you had made your point way up the thread. As a peaceful gesture I am disengaging.
that is just another assimilation fantasy imo.
If your definition of ‘assimilation’ is based on your experience of euros demographically overwhelming maori, then absolutely. The idea that Maori should all become ‘well behaved brown skinned Euros’ is of course repugnant.
But over time distinct cultures that flourish side by side, DO influence each other, and intermarriage DOES generate whole new patterns. In the long run both cultures finish up the stronger for it, initially separate and ultimately as something new.
I quite liked Stan Grant’s take on this:
https://e-tangata.co.nz/news/we-must-remember-our-history-but-move-beyond-it
Actually, I don’t think it’s the fact of there being self checkouts that is KMart’s problem – it’s that there are not enough of them.
they do still have some person operated checkouts, and some staff overseeing the self checkouts.
the queues at St Lukes’ Kmart the last few times I’ve been there were horrendous. At first I thought it was because of a sale.
Basically, if they are selling that much stuff, to that many people, they need more checkouts – and that would require more money spent on checkouts, and more staff to over see them.
And now extend that to all of our infrastructure.
Bomber Bradbury’s analysis is excellent. and Bomber is spot on there-nicely observed.
Nah. Bomber’s being as much a useless donkey dick as Duncan Garner.
Here’s Bomber.
I’ll spell this one out.
There is crap infrastructure and there is immigration. The insidious and unspoken line (it’s common enough and embraced by NZ Labour among others) is that immigration is somehow responsible for the infra-structure being crap…and for it getting getting more crap.
But it’s not.
The infra-structure is crap because successive governments have neglected it. Infra-structure is crap because of bad management; a failure on the part of the politicians who presume to control and manage such things.
But hey. Let’s point the finger “over there” at past and present immigrants instead, some of who could have been offered very good jobs laying in and maintaining all that infrastructure that successive governments have paid fuck all attention to (beyond flogging bits to private concerns that could extract massive profits off the back of steady deterioration).
And as a footnote not an aside, you may or may not have noticed that proposed immigration settings are set along lines of class (ie, huge bias against low skilled or poor immigrants)…which kind of defeats the purpose (if such a purpose exists) of getting basic infra-structure up to scratch.
Not to mention that the arrangements in Kmart are not about infrastructure, but due to commercial decisions.
Kmart are currently treating paying customers in a pretty shoddy way. The queues around the store I’ve been to are crazy.
It’s privately owned infrastructure but it’s still infrastructure.
And there’s absolutely nothing that the customers can do about it.
I agree that lack of planning for infrastructure is not the fault of immigrants. It’s also true that there are natural limits to growth, and there is a relationship between the number of people and what can support them in the physical world and whether that is problematic.
No it’s not.
The point is that the immigration hasn’t been planned for and the necessary infrastructure built. Then there’s the influence it has on wages – you know, the sub-par wages we have because there’s so many people being imported by businesses specifically to keep wages down.
In other words, the cost of the immigration hasn’t been covered.
Garner and Bradbury seem to skip past who creates the pressure on the infrastructure which is not the immigrants.
Remember the guy who came in on the Investment visa? Was going to build that hotel in Epsom? After 5-10 years has not? Now, how hard to have in place a law that says if you do not do what you promise you forfeit the money you had to bring in. It goes tot he Govt coffers and you get PR or Citizenship rescinded. That would be easy if there was political will. BUT it happens a bit.
Secondly, we have the kiwifruit industry brazenly not giving migrant workers contracts and paying under minimum wage (over 50%) of them. That is deliberate law breaking to take advantage of vulnerable people seeking a better life. It is also interrupting the blessed market the right loves SO much. IF there are not enough workers, wages should go up under market forces.
Instead they are deliberately driven down. Single people on benefits would DO seasonal jobs IF
1. The pay was better
2. They could get straight back on a benefit when the work finished
As long as it takes WINZ weeks or months to start paying someone coming off seasonal work it would be a foolish person who leaves it to take a short term job. When you add in the weeks or months to get back on support the real hourly rate of the seasonal work is well below $10 an hour.
Hold on, Bill.
I haven’t heard Labour blame our insufficient infrastructure on immigration.
Labour’s argument is, due to our lacking infrastructure we need to take a breather on immigration, giving us time to play catch up.
“Our immigration settings should always be up for debate, but it is not helpful for Duncan Garner to base the immigration debate on ethnicity.”
Or to do so in a way that is pretty blatantly racist (I will grant him this, I don’t think he realised he was being racist. Time for him to learn though).
Good morning weka,
Did you get my message?
I have now 🙂 Just putting it up. Thanks!
Individual advantages from immigration doesn’t mean that Duncan Garner’s points as displayed in Ad’s comment aren’t correct. They are valid points and need to be thought about and acted on.
The application of rational thinking should not be drowned by sentiment and past success. Now we need something different. You only have to look at the whole picture to see that.
Billshit.
It would have been possible if we’d developed our people and economy rather than throwing it away via neo-liberalism.
Don’t need foreign money to utilise NZ’s resources. For that we need NZ money.
So? Auckland has been badly transformed because of all the foreigners choosing to live here.
He didn’t. He based it upon there being too bloody many and that we’re not planning for it.
A classic example of unfettered immigration, is the experience of the Fijian’s, in a democracy, where the immigrants end up out numbering the citizens, the migrants can set up their own political parties and win with a majority in democratic elections.
There are many other example as well through northern Africa.
Countries with relatively small populations are at serious risk from overpopulating their countries with migrants.
NZ has a very small population compared to China or India, for either or both of those 2 countries to lose 100 million, they wouldn’t even register on population numbers, but if they all arrived at NZ…….
Refugees should be the first choice of migrants to be allowed to enter NZ, a good example of this is the new Green’s member.
NZ is already in a situation where immigrants outnumber indigenous people by something like 5 to 1 or greater.
“The town with my holiday home has been transformed for good with foreigners choosing to live and invest here.”
I can’t believe I read that here at The Standard. How about you ask the locals whose town it is what they think.
Latest lecture from the Bruce Jesson Foundation. As with all it will be interesting – you lucky Aucklanders and even Hamiltonians, don’t miss it.
Register to hear Tūhoe leader Tāmati Kruger’s 2017 Bruce Jesson Lecture – At
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2017-bruce-jesson-lecture-tuhoe-and-self-determination-tickets-37052604337
A leader of the Tūhoe people’s drive for self-determination, Tamati Kruger, will give the 2017 Bruce Jesson Memorial Lecture on 31 October. (Tuesday)
Tue, October 31, 2017 5:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Location
OGHLecTh (102-G36)
Corner of Princes St & Waterloo Quadrant
The University of Auckland
The lecture, at the University of Auckland, will be a historic opportunity for Tūhoe to explain their philosophy of Mana Motuhake/Self-Determination to a national audience, and to report on how the approach is working out in practice since the iwi signed a settlement with the Crown in 2013.
The settlement transferred management of the Tūhoe homeland in the former Urewera National Park to a new entity Te Urewera, which Kruger chairs, run jointly by the Crown and Tūhoe.
It also agreed in principle that Tūhoe should run its own social services, including healthcare and education, for its own people.
So far Tūhoe has opened a health clinic at Taneatua and plans two more, it runs youth and counselling services, offers educational scholarships, and is becoming involved in wider educational and social services.
Tāmati Kruger was educated at Victoria University in Wellington, where he also tutored in te reo Māori and was involved in the early days if the Te Reo Māori Society in the 1970s.
He was the chief Tūhoe negotiator in the settlement process and also chairs the tribal body Tūhoe Te Uru Taumatua.
The lecture will be held at the University of Auckland and you can register here.
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October 2017
FYI
2016 Lecture
A video of Lisa Marriot’s 2016 lecture, ‘Are we all equal in NZ?’, is here.
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Details of past lectures may be found here. Details of past prizewinners may be found here and here.
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c/- Politics & International Relations
University of Auckland
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Thanks heaps for this
Good one
Twitterfinger J. Putinpussy barfs up yet another obstacle to actually getting anything done. By picking a fight with someone he really needs onside, but has zero leverage over.
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/08/politics/donald-trump-bob-corker-tweets/index.html
Some analysis of what this means about his strategy.
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/08/politics/trump-corker-attack/index.html
You mean he has no strategy! Simply reacts in a vengeful way…
Based on all of the evidence of Trump’s first nine months in office, it’s impossible to conclude that he has any sort of comprehensive strategy or theory of the case. He acts (or reacts) and sees what happens. There’s no bigger plan that we’re not privy to. There’s really no plan at all.
Loved this Tweet from Corker in response:
“”It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning,” “
It’s minor relief to be watching them spending their time taking potshots at each other rather than working as a team to implement their agenda.
Well that is certainly true! Executive orders is about all that has been achieved and even then may are subject to litigation. I can’t say the “beautiful, and wonderful” Tax plan has much hope of success either when the populous wake up to the realisation as to who are the ones going to benefit… and it certainly isn’t them!
The stacking of the EPA with Climate denialists is unfortunately having an effect, and the run down of funding in social services and eduction, and FEMA. The flow on will be increasing dissatisfaction and resentment to the administration and they will have a very difficult job at re-election in 2018 and almost no hope in 2020.
A recent poll has the Chump on only 24% approval rating and even 33% of Repugnents disapprove as well.
The big thing they’ve achieved is stacking the courts. McConnell refusing to confirm Obama appointments left a huge backlog of vacancies that they’ve been fairly quickly filling with Heritage Foundation recommendations.
President Caligula, and no one in GOP has the stones to hold him accountable.
President Trump told the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Seema Verma to deny a request from the Republican-controlled state of Iowa to fix their health-care marketplace, according to The Washington Post.
According to the Post, Iowa officials sought for months to get federal permission to fix health insurance markets in their state, but they were shut down by Trump administration officials.
Critics of the president say Trump’s unusual move is a part of the administration’s effort to undermine ObamaCare
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/354170-trump-told-hhs-to-deny-request-to-fix-iowa-obamacare-market-report
We have unemployment in NZ and under-employment too in high numbers. Yet the employers can’t find retail workers with enough ability and bleat they need to bring people in from overseas because they have new ideas. This was the plaint of Massey Uni professional on RadioNZ – couldn’t find so here is Scoop on it.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU1710/S00197/massey-survey-shows-amazon-effect-spooks-local-retailers.htm
Professor Elms says the survey also showed continued concerns about skill shortages in the sector. The top two most frequently-mentioned human resource priorities in both 2016 and 2017 were staffing and training.
“There is concern that New Zealand doesn’t have a strong enough talent pipeline. We definitely have skills gaps in buying, merchandising and digital, and this will only be exacerbated as retailers compete with the likes of Amazon,” he says.
“The skills and competencies required are becoming a lot more sophisticated – retailers need staff that understand how business models are changing if they are to successfully integrate their physical and digital platforms.”
This from Google:
Bachelor of Retail and Business Management … – Massey University
http://www.massey.ac.nz/retail
The multi-billion dollar retail sector is New Zealand’s second-largest for employment, responsible for seamlessly and endlessly delivering goods and services to …
NZ Herald: New Zealand’s Latest News, Business, Sport, Weather …
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/author/carmen-hall/
2 days ago – carmen.hall@nzme.co.nz. @ Bay_Times … Rotorua business leaders plan a national campaign to attract skilled workers. ROTORUA … NEW ZEALAND · Migrants struggling to find jobs. 12 Sep, 2017 10: …. Data shows retail spending on cards in Tauranga jumped 6.4% for year to June. ….. That was hard but I can’t imagine …
From RadioNZ
In the latest bid to solve the construction industry’s critical labour shortage, a new campaign starts today with the aim of attracting up to 20,000 foreign workers. The website LookSee Build New Zealand has 20 companies signed up looking for new staff as the pressure mounts to meet a projected demand for almost 60,000 skilled workers in just five years.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201861653/construction-industry-s-latest-push-to-recruit-overseas-workers
and this from USA
Companies can’t find workers to rebuild after Harvey and Irma | Don’t …
http://www.sentinel-echo.com/…/companies-can-t-find-workers…/article_282d07a1-f5cc-5b...
4 days ago – More people were looking for jobs , particularly men. … Business owners say a lack of skilled workers who can pass a drug test has stalled their growth .
Companies can’t find workers to rebuild after Harvey and Irma
By Danielle Paquette | The Washington Post Oct 4, 2017 Updated Oct 4, 2017
This from USA, where we seem to import ideas and policies from as we have adopted a drug testing regime which seems to be draconian and unnecessary for most employers.
I think they all need fresh ideas.
Worth a look, when you have time
Adani are virtually bankrupt and the entire thing is a scam to get money out of the Qlnd govt to prop up their failing investments elsewhere.
Tellingly none of the big banks will touch them, and the big automation player I know, who’d normally have people dedicated to winning a project of this scale aren’t bothering to waste time on it.
Yeah, but Turnbull and co are happy to loan a Billion or two, backing the Mining Industry
RedLogix, NewsFlash
Yes and yes. You are both correct.
This can be found from 36:15 in the clip.
https://youtu.be/6GDLHtH4zhc?t=36m15s
This week is the week we find out if the infamous Barnaby Joyce loses his job, and his deputy and a few others as well.
One decision has already been made for the One Nation party candidate Robertson, the Flat earth believer, the Supreme court found he was not eligible, ignorance is not a defense, grim times for the Turnbull Govt with only a majority of one and 20 consecutive negative polls for him, the latest one seeing him fall another 2 points
Unless….
I’ve just finished filling out the 12 pages of Temporary Additional Support Re-Application paperwork, a joyful 3 monthly ritual in order to be able to pay the rent.
Anyone familiar with these forms will know about that threatening sounding Q.20 :
“You and your partner must take all necessary steps to increase income or reduce costs where possible. Please indicate where what steps you and/or your partner have taken to get other assistance, reduce costs or increase income.”
I was very tempted to write in “voted for Greens on their platform of raising benefit levels.” Would that constitute an attempt to increase income when one has no other ways of doing so?
Unfortunately I was too scared to- because even if the satire is over their heads, there is a very real fear these days that the slightest criticism against the system, and I’m implicating benefit rates here of course, will cross the desk of the wrong person ie one who could make things very difficult.
Looking forward to running the security gauntlet, and a long queue at the office, just to get the stamped receipt for said papers, then hope to god they don’t mess up again like last time. Multiply this scenario for 100s of 1000s of NZers…
Lol, I can understand the temptation (and agree with the need for caution).
Re the office visit, would be interesting if beneficiaries kept time records of what is involved in keeping a benefit.
I post my forms in, but make sure I always keep copies for myself.
Weka, you’re brave posting in forms. I did once, many moons ago and they were never seen again. Best practice these days is to hand deliver- if practically possible- physically hand them over and request a stamped signed receipt. They usually photocopy the front page and hand that back.
The annual DB confirmation paperwork can only be mailed back to somewhere in Auckland so no choice there and I’m terrified because there’s no way of knowing it arrived until a) your payments keep going in as usual or b) you get the letter saying it’s been stopped. And they wonder why the increasing rates of severe anxiety?
I used to hand deliver and get it date stamped until I got to ill to do so. So needs must. I take the view that if I post the forms and they get lost, it’s WINZ’s fault and it’s on them to sort it out. If my benefit was lapsing because of their fuck ups, then it’s time to get senior management and advocates or CLC lawyers involved. None of that is probably any less time consuming or stressful than what you are doing though 🙁
What’s DB?
Sorry, disability benefit
Sigh. I am so sorry you have to go through this.
On a slightly humourous note
” You and your partner must take all necessary steps to increase income or reduce costs where possible. Please indicate where what steps you and/or your partner have taken to get other assistance, reduce costs or increase income.” ”
I think they cut and paste this for everything… Principals, DHBs, Tertiaries, Rape Prevention Orgs… just substitute partner
Good point Tracey…anything to justify not giving money they do actually have to people and organisations that need it.
They also change the rules without feeling the need to inform their ‘clients’.
In order to receive the supported living payment (the old invalid benefit), I had to supply a medical certificate. The doctor needed to indicate how long the med cert was for, ie 2 years, five years or never. Three years ago my rheumatologist signed me off as never needing another one. However last year Winz requested a new one. When I phoned to ask why, I was told someone would call me back. subsequently I received a voicemail threatening to look into my part-time employment 3 years ago.
Apparently everyone on SLP now needs to provide a med cert every two years. Next year, at 64 yrs, I will have to provide another one. This has no useful purpose and is outright harassment.
All those who said waiting for the outcome of the special votes was a waste of time and made no difference were wrong.
Winston Peters said he wanted to wait until after the results of specials as they could change things significantly, Bill and the media disagreed, they said no significant change, however, Peters, after the release of the specials, announced that the outcome was SIGNIFICANT.
Maybe, to extrapolate, the significance indicates a more likely outcome for one side and not the other, my view is that L/G block is now in good contention, based on Peters putting so much emphasis on the SIGNIFICANCE of the specials.
Optimism? YES
Reality? we’ll still have to wait and see.
What says democracy, or the spreading there of….
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11930194
Conrad selling off-the-plan Auckland apartments for NZ residency
This seems very strange to me.
Welcome to new Zealand – neo-liberal hellhole.
No wonder we have health issues in this country.
No doubt Katherine Rich pimps for these organisations.
‘Kiwi kids are exposed to 27 junk food advertisements a day, study finds.’
In a world-first study by Otago and Auckland universities, 168 children from across the Wellington region, aged between 11 and 13, wore cameras around their necks for four days, capturing what they saw every seven seconds.
In one case, a poster for Coca-Cola hung on a classroom wall. In others, marketing for sugary or energy drinks on the sides of dairies or on the ends of buses plagued their journey home.
“The consequence of that is obesity,” she said. “[Kids] are twice as likely to see junk food marketing as healthy marketing, it goes against that effort to help children maintain their weight.”
Ministry of Health statistics show 11 per cent of New Zealand children aged between 2 and 14 are obese, and a further 22 per cent are overweight.
Sugary drinks, fast food, confectionary and snack food advertisements were the most common found in the study. Product packaging was the dominant platform, followed by signs.
In an effort to reduce exposure, the researchers are calling on the incoming Government to impose a sugary drinks tax, regulate junk food marketing and impose rules that would see only healthy foods sold in schools.
They would also like to see a ban on junk food advertising in sports, such as Gatorade’s partnership with the All Blacks.’
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/well-good/teach-me/97677040/kiwi-kids-are-exposed-to-27-junk-food-advertisements-a-day-study-finds
Hidden cost of feeding grain to farm animals to hit $1.32tn a year
‘Our habit of feeding human foods, such as grain and soya, to farm animals will cost us $1.32tn (£1tn) a year by 2050 globally, according to environmental campaigners.
The hidden costs of the industrial farming system are vast, and urgently need to be brought into clear focus, Peter Stevenson of Compassion in World Farming told the Extinction and Livestock conference in London. “There’s a worrying disconnect between the retail price of food and the true cost of production. As a result, food produced at great environmental cost can appear to be cheaper than more sustainably produced alternatives.”
“Cheap food is something we pay for three times, once at the checkout, again in tax subsidies and again in the enormous clean up cost to our health and environment,” his colleague Philip Lymbery pointed out.
We are paying for soil erosion, water pollution, biodiversity loss, climate change, and a multitude of other impacts which are passed on to the public by farmers and the sector, the conference heard. For example, our current rate of soil loss costs £400bn a year globally, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has estimated that water pollution in six EU states alone costs €2bn-5bn a year; and according to the European Environment Agency the current rate of biodiversity loss is reducing global GDP by 3% every year.’…….
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/07/feeding-grain-to-farm-animals-wastes-more-than-1bn-a-year-data-shows
Rise of mega farms: how the US model of intensive farming is invading the world
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/18/rise-of-mega-farms-how-the-us-model-of-intensive-farming-is-invading-the-world
Every Single Piece Of Plastic Ever Made Still Exists.
……..’Because plastic lasts for so long, every single piece of plastic ever made still exists, and will continue existing for at least 500 years. To put that in context, if Leonardo da Vinci had drunk water from a plastic bottle when he was painting the Mona Lisa, that bottle would not have fully decomposed yet.
Every day, more and more plastic is produced, used and thrown away. In countries where disposable cups are made of plastic, for example, it may take only seconds for one to leave the package, be used, and end up in a trash can. So much plastic is being consumed that there is an area bigger than France of throw-away plastic swirling at all depths in the North Pacific Ocean. It has become so ubiquitous that birds are using it to build their nests.’……
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/every-single-piece-of-plastic-ever-made-still-exists_us_58d15c2ce4b07112b647322c?utm_campaign=Twitter&utm_source=Link&utm_medium=US
Not quite true, some plastics are organically based and used in the agricultural industries, others are very susceptible to UV corrosion which do break down to their base products a bit like rusting steel.
Something that annoys me, is that everyone blames the plastic bottles for ending up in the water ways and sea, yet, the bottles themselves are not responsible, they didn’t leap out of someone’s hand and into the river, but the PEOPLE discarding them are, surly there is a degree of responsibility of humans to care for the environment by recycling and discarding in the proper manner, plastic water bottles are a very good method of hydration, they are also relatively safe and bacteria free, ideal in emergencies. Plastic bottle manufacturers recycle a very high percentage returned bottles.
If you look at some of the less developed countries, where waste disposal is non existent and the main means of disposal is to simply “biff it out the window”, there is no system for garbage collection, unfortunately the migrants from these countries when emigrating to more civilized countries don’t usually adapt to the changes and values and continue to litter as they always have, I’ve actually seen graphic evidence of this in some overseas cities in areas of particularly high migrant residents from these under developed countries.
The micro beads used in cosmetics are a real problem too, with some countries banning products containing micro beads.
NewsFlash
I remember a past Parliamenary Commissioner for the Environment Dr Williams, in 2002 praise the efforts of the Mayor of a Brazilian city for cleaning up the city and making it a people-friendly more attractive place.
Morgan Williams (ecologist) – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_Williams_(ecologist)
John Morgan Williams (born 25 March 1943), known as Dr. J. Morgan Williams or Morgan Williams, is a New Zealand ecologist and agricultural scientist who served as the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment from 1997 to March 2007. … Greening the City: Bringing Biodiversity Back into the Urban
Environment”.
I think that they encouraged people to hand in rubbish from the streets and favellas for physical, practical reward, such as food, perhaps some eggs. It made a big difference. Also they had covered bus stops made in clear plastic so people were covered and crime was discouraged. That would be much appreciated.
Curitiba – Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment
http://www.pce.parliament.nz/media/pdfs/CURTIBA.pdf
On the southern plateau of Brazil one city, Curitiba, has lifted itself out of tough … Brazilian Ambassador to New Zealand and his staff for assisting with visits and complimentary visas to Brazil. … mercial competition models, separation of poli- cies from ….. Morgan. Transport corridor. Section through transport corridor (IPPUC).
http://www.pce.parliament.nz/media/pdfs/CURTIBA.pdf
I think anyone who comes to this blog would be interested in this report. I urge you to read it because it deals with many things that way heavily on this country now, and might be helpful to consider points for Auckland. Probably the Auckland activist group already have many similar policies but lack the breadth of mind in the elites to effect change for the lumpenproletariat.
Just an observation: For an OK bank – certainly not amongst the worst, ASB’s Chief Jee Bung Wunder is a complete fucking irriot (going forward).
The greens have never been in power and don’t want to be
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
Wow, Ian. You really sound like a person with deep understanding and penetrating analytical thought.
Blast those impotent Greens! They said they wanted to go into Government with Labour, but by the Powers of Ian, it seems they don’t !