Have there been infil houses built in your street?
Are they still standing empty months aftter construction?
Micky Savage penned a post on the 30,000 empty houses in Auckland, (Now 40,000)
The Labour Government echoing the cries of the National opposition bought into the myth of not enough houses, the result was a building frenzy and now many of these newly built houses are standing empty, just waiting to be bulldozed.
We should have had an empty homes tax like they have in Vancouver.
Now it's too late.
Bring in an empty homes tax now and the banks and receivers will be even quicker to call in the bulldozers to avoiid paying it
An empty homes tax would be a good idea and it could be scaled.
It is never too late to rebalance the housing market or for the government to go back to the old state housing model (government control and funding) with modification where needed.
The way the numbers are written here casually suggests there are 40,000 empty newly built houses in Auckland standing empty, just waiting to be bulldozed.
The most political taboo sentence in NZ which is causing the most harm, is no new taxes on property.
Put another way the government are prepared to fund the social problems caused by the high rents and homelessness (and everything ugly as in between) but not to do what is needed. Tax to stop the gluttony of home investors.
I knew a comment would be made about how impractical a tax on a rent rise would be.
I think it would be effective when it came to an improportional rent rise. The average home is now worth $900,000. Never enough for the landlords who have wealth in mortar. The line needs to be redrawn, some renters are suffering financially and emotionally and the homeless are the worst off. Extensive social and personal problems are being experienced by those who struggle.
When it comes to Work and Income the abatements for earnings above the allowed extra income there is a system to manage that. A system can be designed at IRD for rent increases.
I think that was a wise comment Treetops. I like some of the other ideas, but not to bring in something that doesn't stop rents from rising merely because the value of the property is rising because of housing inflation – that's through the roof!
Perhaps there should be an allowance for landlords to put rents up annually at the rate of the CPI and also if there was a rise in bank interest. Anything higher than that would have to be justified by producing documents showing remedial work done on the place, plus a physical inspection by a tax inspector – they miss nothing!
A capital gains tax would also be pretty ineffectual. What is needed is a tax that is collected on a regular basis – annually, half-yearly, or suchlike – not one that is collected only after the house is sold.
To have any effect a tax would need to impact on a landlord's regular outgoings.
Mike, I understand your logic, but many landlords really are struggling from a revenue point of view, particularly as they have increasingly been loaded with additional expenses (insulation, heat pumps etc), and the phased removal of interest deductibility. Their entire investment model was based on capital gains.
Add on an additional tax, and almost certainly many will exit the market. Yes, that may be good for house prices, but I suspect the number of rentals available would dramatically drop, and consequently and ironically rents would increase.
This problem (rentals for tax free capital gain) was many years in the making. CBT is not a quick fix but would stop the speculators without harming the landlords in the here and now.
Mike, I understand your logic, but many landlords really are struggling from a revenue point of view,
Many landlords seem to have made some poor business decisions. It's about time we put them out of their misery. The alternative, CGT or Brightline Tax notwithstanding, will allow the present situation to continue indefinitely.
A property investors tax which treats the profit as secondary income.
Home investors have caused too much economic impact on the housing market, they have become like the banks in the US who caused the 2008 recession. The banks are also part of the problem financing those with collateral in the housing investment market.
A property investors tax which treats the profit as secondary income.
I would leave rental income untaxed, and replace it with a property tax of some sort. Of course, with rental income untaxed, expenses would not be deductible.
I do realise that the recent brightline test extention and the gradual loss of tax relief on interest for a housing loan will help. Whether or not this will be enough to rebalance the housing market will take time to be seen. I'd go full hog and just do what is needed immediately.
eg; There is a disproportionate amount of housing left vacant by landbanking profiteers considering NZ is swamped with both; primarily, and secondarily, homeless people. While maintenance & repairs may be safer & easier without occupying tenants, there has to be a limit. An empty building is not a residence, and should not be protected as such.
Actually, Treetop; I mistook this thread for 2.2… rather than 3.2… so my comment was a bit out of place, being more about empty houses than rent control. Though they are but different aspects of the same issue. That stuff article didn't seem to be the NZI one that Swarbrick referred to (in link below), but Jimmy seemed to be saying that there's been a bit of a flurry recently.
This passage stood out to me:
In a market like ours, renters are price-takers. There’s no bargaining power, and a sense of impermanence that itself creates constant upward wrenching of rents as landlords welcome new tenants at an increased price.
When you can’t put down roots, there’s no sense of belonging nor ownership and no incentive to invest in what could be your community. Kids move schools with each new neighbourhood. You can’t plan for a future you’re not afforded.
Afghanistan was always going to be another Vietnam. Senseless killing and fear until forced compliance and control is in the hands of those who commit the carnage.
Sadly most Islamic dominant countries are Conservative or, as you say, 'ultra Conservative'. The problem in these countries is religion, the more conservative the religion, the more 'right ' it tends to be.
It's really weird that we allow that in nz! Try set up any male only section in a pub ,club or golf course and there would be an uproar, but chuck a bit of religion in and it's all good.
From a geo-political perspective the land-locked, highly mountainous and fractured landscape ensured that Afghanistan was always going to be a relatively poor, tribal, fractured and conservative society. The elements of this play out everywhere.
That this geography is overlaid by an extremely conservative version of Islam is partly an accident of history, and partly a consequence of a religion that still struggles to separate state and mosque.
That the nation also lies at a strategic node in Asia, meaning it has been repeatedly invaded by everyone with an army for millenia, contributes to a highly insular political outlook.
Add all these things together and this horror bombing is merely another blood drenched paragraph in a massive volume of endless tragedy. And it seems no-one knows how to write an ending to it. Leave Afghanistan alone and they scribble more crazed prose like this; invade to impose modernity and they rebel with equal ferocity.
I'm not sure that it's at all useful to try and attribute 'blame' to a Gordian Knot like this – the roots of it are entangled deep in geography, history and ill-fortune. The scum who committed this bombing are of course absolutely culpable, but beyond this?
" I suspect it's simply arrogance and clumsiness from RL, rather than deep-seated racism."…I know it is a serious thing to call someone out as a racist, but RL has a serious habit of describing the people living in third world countries in the way he did right there, like an old school imperialist (he is like listening to BBC archives sometimes)…personally I think he might be way too enamoured with his sacred 'geopolitical' world view, which is very problematic IMO.
Peter chch I think that's a unique point – that the city dwellers and the tribal areas are coming from different places.
That has happened in India too and probably at the base of the terrible street crime which I think was of a group of men raping and then killing a young female student in a miniskirt (because she was improperly clothed in their beliefs?), and they attacked her male companion also.
Grey, TE Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) wrote a great book 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom' about his time in the Middle East in WW1.
Different area, but his insights I think are applicable to Afghanistan today in many ways. The desert Arabs were ultra conservative. The city Arabs largely embraced the Turkish and Western ways. The hill Arabs were altogether different again, as were coastal Arabs. Then you have religion (not all are Muslim by any means). Different sects within the religions. Differing tribal groups with differing culture. Bit of a tangle.
I well remember a book written by Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, a senior Taliban and Ambassador to Pakistan. Commenting on the destruction of the Buddhas in Bamiyan, he said (paraphrased) 'they might be Taliban, but not all Taliban have the same views. We could not stop them even though we tried'. Complex area for sure!
" The political right and their extreme hardline factions all over the world are responsible for the very worst atrocities we see today."
I think you left out the most important one…the extreme centre and their hardline fractions who are also all over the world causing untold misery and death…which only plays right into the hands of all the religious and political right extremists the world over, creating a cynical symbiotic loop that often benefits them both.
The USSR in Afghanistan engaged in total war from 1979 To mid 80s. 3 million refugees fled to Pakistan, from where the Taliban developed and the medieval theocracy of the next 20 years Spread across the border back to Afghanistan.
Well yes and no, yes the Russian invasion was a disaster for the people of Afghanistan, however the US had started arming and supporting the anti communist Islamists for their own reasons well before the '79 invasion and that group armed by the US is the 'medieval theocracy' that you speak of., which is exactly my point, the west (extreme centre) support/arm/enable even the most horrific leaders around the world if it suits their purpose…regardless of down stream negative effects on the population of those countries or their neighbours.
BTW If the Russians or Iranians had armed the Taliban to the level that the US armed the Mujahideen, the US would have left Afghanistan a long time ago.
The USSR was asked by the communist Afghan government for assistance in fighting internal enemies. In fact, the Russians were very reluctant to get involved at first, to the point that they suggested to president that he may need to water down his policies a little bit.
I think you will find that this was a religious sectarian event by the Sunnies against the Shias. A religious disagreement rather than a political act against those whom they do not consider true muslims..
Also what defines them is that they act in such a way, believing that differences that exist between people can justify the killing of 70 innocent girls.
This over the top reflex action from the PSA and CTU is disingenuous and reeks of greed in an unprecedented economic climate caused by a raging pandemic.
The Government is extending the pay freeze in a move to reduce debt from the Covid-19 response.
…
Ardern said the guidelines to the chief executives in the public sector was just a starting point and now there would be good faith negotiations with the unions.
…
"Our view has been despite the times we are in we have to keep lifting up the lowest pay."
The guidelines didn't stop teachers, police and nurses from moving through pay bands – it just didn't give any room for those pay bands to be adjusted, she said.
No. The base salary rate does not include penal rates and shift allowances. They are earned over and above one's salary and vary from pay packet to pay packet (so to speak) depending on an individual's roster rotations.
How disengenous is the PM. So the lack of pay band movement is ineffect a pay cut (and for those at the end of the band nothing)and in 4 years time when these get renegotiated Will the 4 year period of no movement be a starting point then add on pay increases? I think not
Yet the PM and MO’s will be benchmarked to the private sector so their increase will be adjusted to take into account the nil increases as the Remuneration Authority needs to maintain relativity.
“it just didn't give any room for those pay bands to be adjusted, she said.”
Perpahs this commentary to protect the poor is to cover up all the housing issues that have been failed to be addressed by the govt and the costs that have been incurred by many.
You really need to do something about this anti- government (read Ardern) paranoid condition you have been exhibiting for a long time now. I suggest you open up and admit you are really just trolling this site. It will make you feel a lot better. It really will.
Unfortunately Anne this Labour government's behaviour is open to criticism. Many who visit and write on this site are interested in the treatment of all citizens by government over a wide area of responsibilities, and where the Left is drifting off the course it set itself earlier in the 20th century, not just particular areas of personal concern.
You really need to do something about this anti- government (read Ardern) paranoid condition you have been exhibiting for a long time now. I suggest you open up and admit you are really just trolling this site. It will make you feel a lot better. It really will .
You know Anne, don't you, that calling into question the mental health of someone who disagrees with you says more about you than it does about your victim?
I disagree. reading many of herodotus' posts tells me more about their state of mind than reading annes posts. one comes across as open-minded, the other …not
Well Woodart that's your opinion and as someone who has suffered her personal abuse, I disagree.
As Grey says, this Labour government is open to criticism.
On TS we probably agree in general with the aims, but the 'Left' is a broad church and not all of us are slavishly members of a tribe and will support them regardless of what they do. Does not make H a troll. Why are some in the Left so self righteous and abusive to even mild dissenting viewpoints?
"why are some in the left so self righteous that they need to find an argument that doesnt concern them". there, fixed it for you. maybe, we should all look at the u.k. and see what endless bickering does for political stability. or, how to achieve defeat out of an expected victory. democracy is NOT an excuse to constantly whinge about the little details. (that last line will start whingeing about the right to whinge).
"and see what endless bickering does for political stability. or, how to achieve defeat out of an expected victory."What is the point of victory if those in need under National are still in need under Labour ? You could read from your comments that winning is everything denying the other side at all costs is all that matters.
This century we had had poor opposition, who then holds the government to account ? And what of those who benefited under National now receiving super profits under the policies of the current govt? IMO those who have supported the government need to raise their voices and speak out for those voiceless soles being left behind or being treated poorly/forgotten e.g. homeless, those in slum government paid short term accomodation. What was promised and why is delivery slow or not at all or areas within NZ that need attention e.g. The Environment and its climate consequences. Sure no government is perfect and issues will get missed,
I think some here have to open their eyes to see what is out there, or do you want this to be an ego chamber that the PM and Labour are just IT ??? This Labour party maybe the best for government at the moment given the options. BUT that does not mean to say that they do not have faults. This government (labour) has been in for 4 years now, and unless those who support do not demand that issues/faults are addressed then where do we go ??
And unlike you I would like to see things within NZ to improve, and if you follow any of my comments you will see I am firmly for the housing market to be sorted as IMO most of the problems arise from this, and labour are NOT doing it.
PM Ardern is talking about pay parity. This seem to mean that everybody will now earn the same for quite some time whilst the payback of the billions will need a bit more than that.
The issue is inflation, already going up with rates, rents and you know "healthy" food on the increase. (Roof over the head, food on the table, clothes on your back). It would not be so inconceivable if GST would go up. If wages are not, than you earn less. If you have a mortgage it will bite as interest rates will go back up again , maybe 2022? or later. (Roof over the head, food on the table, clothes on your back)
Selective austerity. Needs to start with a CGT to stem housing inflation, exempting the family home. Ardern has lost votes by not giving a wage increase to those on 60k and landlords votes are more important.
Is there a hidden message to landlords that those on $60k cannot afford a rent rise?
The cost of emergency housing 1 mil a day is here to stay unless the government find an alternative other than motels or hotels. A bed to sleep in is a human right.
The govt simply made a dumb mistake reverting to the 'sound finance' view when its gone out of fashion (even with the IMF). But when the public observed the 2020 wage subsidy coming in after years/a full decade of insistance on public spending limits the game was up on that narrative and people realised that the NZ govt doesn't face a budget constraint (e.g if it puts spending into the budget then that spending goes ahead).
While the govt are now trying to rewrite the narrative to say lower income pay rises will be prioritised, this doesn't require a spending cap but does require a review of public sector pay gradients. In fact a reasonable flattening would probably raise the public wage bill quite a bit, not shrink it.
What I expect as an outcome is the typical, some will be successfully promoted rapidly enough to get around it. Those who don't or can't work around the pay systems in their organisations will bare the brunt with no/minimal pay advances for several years. Some will go across into contracting, actually costing more and also removing accountability for delivery out of public institutions, and some will take their efforts away from the public sector.
Timing your ideologically motivated beltches wrong can be very politically costly. This is of course exactly on form from Labour who truely believe in their superior management of the economy supposedly leading to a rising economy based on govt surpluses (and paying no attention to expanding housing debt).
Yes, the country will need an effective and motivated public sector in the near future. Labour may need to give up their 'better economic managers' mentality before this can be fully and openly adopted.
"The events of the past week – so at odds with the old rules of the game – would suggest that not only have the rules changed radically, but so, too, has the name of the game itself. What our politicians now appear to be playing is a game called “Holding On To Power At All Costs”. It is predicated on voters having a smaller set of principles, and a larger collection of prejudices. A greater propensity to complain, but a reduced willingness to do anything more than post their displeasure on social media. Most important of all, it assumes that voters are rapidly losing the ability to act consistently from first principles; and that they no longer expect their politicians and political parties to even try."
Chris Trotter argues that Labour has thrown out the old Political Rule Book, and that the new game they’re playing is no longer called 'Democracy' but 'Holding On To Power At All Costs'
Holding On To Power At All Costs' ?
Well, if that was the case Labour would be doing the opposite to what they have done. That is, not only removing the pay freeze but giving the Pub. Servants a pay increase – at the expense of the lowest paid workers in the country.
Not if they charm the national voter to keep them in power.
Labour won the Covid election with a majority thanks to National voters.
As a result, we now have a single majority party that is tinkering on all edges but hardly doing anything at all. And the opposition is useless, either shattered as the National Party, or beginners as the Maori Party or more or less silent as is the Green Party.
And the stuff they do, comes several years late and chances are with not enough money, and oh, surely because some IT network needs to be redone, by hte highest bidder of course. Greasing hands makes for good future jobs.
The self test for cervical cancer that has been cancelled in 2018 to suddenly have priority is the best example. But then now there is a Labour person seriously ill with cervical cancer and a minister to boot, so yeah, i guess its now important. Now a cynical person like me will say that they need to throw money at this issue now, considering that one of their own has a good chance of dying. So here the party is doing the right thing, but 4 years to late, at least for that one person that is currently undergoing Cancer treatment.
National voters don't care one bit if poor people get poorer, if homeless people stay homeless, if poor kids schools fall apart with moldy rooms fit only for demolition. And Labour atm is by all means nothing more then National light. But with added kindness and withs some gentleness sprinkles in pretty sparkly colors..
Labour currently is not even trying to please the left, they like their very moderate, very conservative, national voters who like a surplus, so that when national wins again, national again has tax cuts to offer.
These two parties sit in the same boat, and they rowing in the same direction. Most of us however are not in the boat, and we are lucky when there is some debris to hold on to before drowining.
Speaking to The AM Show on Monday, Ardern confirmed Allan's diagnosis had not pushed the self-swab along.
"No, this was part of our budget work," she said.
"This was our first announcement that was a part of this year's budget. Obviously, quite a bit of work has gone into it. This is us responding to those calls for us to bring in a form of screening that we hope will lift the number of women involved in the screening programme of course we have existing screening but we are not reaching everyone."
considering that you are so concerned with people not making stuff up, please do not accuse people here on the Standard of drug use unless you have good proof that they do indeed take drugs. Some might really just disagree with you, and you could also get a person in legal trouble with you making up these stories.
As for the timing of the funding of this particular test:
The change was first promised in 2017, but attempts to get the programme funded in 2018, 2019, and 2020 were rejected.
“It is overdue,” she said. “But we understand that a lot of thought and money needs to go into developing these complicated IT systems.”
as I said, i am a cynical person, and there were more then just I who asked why the self test that was to be rolled out in 2018 was cancelled again and again for lack of funding, and now suddenly there is funding.
Personally i am very happy that it will hopefully be rolled out sooner rather then later, as quite a few women actually have issues with a GP or an OBGYN poking around in their private parts. But excuse me if I find the sudden announcement forced by happenings rather tehn budgeted.
Because that number of a 160 was the number for 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and now 2021. Kiri Allan is just one of many.
And consider that women in this country are already on an IT database for cervical cancer smears and mamographies, so really it must be the most complicated IT system Ever.
And consider that women in this country are already on an IT database for cervical cancer smears and mamographies, so really it must be the most complicated IT system Ever.
There are completely separate databases for each screening programmes (with their own laws even in some cases), and NZ’s health IT systems are old and disconnected. A limited pool of suitable people is available to do the IT work, because that part of the health system has not been invested in enough by any governments in recent decades.
That is why the change to cervical self-screening was never started. It was not "cancelled" and the hold up was of official approval rather than 'funding' as such.
Without proper systems to manage risk and quality, no government in the world will launch any screening programme.
Bowel screening had to wait for that too. Breast screening is up for a major IT rework, including managing over 200k women who the current system misses out. About time.
After a five-year campaign by the medical community, highlighted by Minister Kiri Allan’s diagnosis in April, this change could see 1.4 million eligible women able to self-test from 2023.
i guess the cancer treatment costs should have been taken into account as to what is more affordable, chemo treatment, lost hours worked, lost income, dead women, widowers with children etc etc etc, all cheaper then that much vaunted IT system.
Myself and my team felt very sad… These are young whānau, it's very sad considering that it's now a preventable disease," she told Checkpoint.
The government was not serving women well on cervical cancer screening, she said.
"It's really failing a section of New Zealand, and its failure on two counts. One, it's not reaching everyone it should reach, because that's its responsibility as a programme. And secondly, it's using a poor test, a second-class test. What they're doing now is cytology – that is now a second-class test. There is now a gold standard test, which we should be using in New Zealand."
Dr Lawton said she was "totally baffled" why the self-swabbing test was not freely available yet.
"We were not talking a lot of money here. This was supposed to start in 2017.
"And it wasn't just the self-testing. It's moving to the gold standard test which is looking for the [HPV] virus.
"The primary test was supposed to be starting to be rolled out in 2017… Australia has HPV primary testing, the UK has, we're really behind. And this is women's lives at risk because of this.
"The self-testing is the new technology that's come into it, which is really exciting because that's just as good as if a doctor does it."
Dr Lawton said the cost of providing that test to New Zealand women would be about $40 million over three years.
A Ministry of Health spokeswoman said implementing the HPV screening roll-out “requires funding and is a decision for Government”.
I feel very comfortable with my thought that this would still not be an issue for Grant to fund – considering that they could not find the money the last four years, and that if Kiri Allan had not been diagnosed with advanced cervical cancer, nothing much could be done. I can not see an IT system that complicated and costly, but then i don't work in Government and thus don't know how many people need to make money first on the IT system before the life of women is factured in the cost of that IT system.
Funding was needed for a new IT system, which would be built as a new component on the national bowel screening programme platform.
Please read what I have already written above about everything you just repeated. You saying it again and again does not make it true but it might mislead others.
Sacha you saying it has not been 'cancelled' but pushed up or held up or reconsidered or or or
fact is the initial roll out was planned for 2018 – i have provided ample evidence of that – coming from Health Leaders in this country btw, and it is now finally been giving funding – that was asked for several times by Healthleaders in this Country – again i provided evidence of that.
It is now planned to be rolled out in 2023.
So the IT system did not receive funding in 2018 or earlier, did not receive funding in 2019, 2020, and is still not working until 2023 because it will take three years for a component to be build to be tacked on to an already existing IT system. As per my last posts.
So you can argue about the word 'cancelled' and disagree with me until the cows come home, but never the less the fact stands that we don't have this self test available, because Funding was not granted by this government last time and now it came about because of the negative press in regards to the 'cancellation of the rollout' due to Kiri Allens diagnose.
And no matter how many will protest to the contrary and that includes the Prime Minister, the optics speak for itself.
But feel free to believe that we really did not have the money to create that extra data base for 1.7 million women who currently get either a phone call or a letter from their GP to remind them of their anual pap smear, or the letter from the DHB to remind them of their mammograms.
Feel free to read all the links that i have provided for you so that you see that I in fact make nothing up, and thus don't risk to mis-inform anyone. And considering that many many health official have literally begged this government over the last few years to finally get going on this, i am in very good company in my believes.
I am familiar not only with all the articles you have linked but with screening programmes and the NZ health system, especially the IT side. You are embarrassing yourself.
And the approval was in process before Kiri Allen became news. Honestly it's like watching someone try to pin reasons for a political poll result to something that randomly occurred in the same week rather than months earlier.
A prominent person of the Labour party got very very sick, due to not undergoing a pretty invasive method to obtain a pap smear.
The program that could have done a better job of providing said Labour person with a private at home self test was rejected/cancelled several times due to lack of funds (this is evident per the articles that i have linked to – its in the words 'FUNDING was not provided'.
And please provide a citation or link to the fact that the approval of funds was in process before Kiri Allen was diagnosed with a Stage 3 cervical Cancer with a 16% survival chance. Cause that is what it means to women and people with female centric plumbing who don't get tested in time due to what ever reason, and above all because they could not get it done at home.
It was always only ever about money, and that is the best reason i give this government. Any other reason would be callous, inhumane, and chances are has cost the live of quite a few women and others.
Bad press about the self tests not being made available, Health leaders pleading with government as to why this is not done and voila
You are embarrassing yourself in repeating that this is not connected, and that the only reason this did not happen is an IT program. It has been several years now for this much vaunted IT program to be written and implemented.
Here is an interesting interview with ex CIA officer Philip Agee..while watching it one can't help but wonder how it was so easy for so many so called left wingers to have just jumped straight into bed with this nefarious group of terrorists first over Trump/Russia and then Syria and now China (not to mention Venezuela)….the only conclusion one can come too is that these people never really believed in any progressive left project to start with, and that a deep rooted imperialist tendency was always lurking just below the surface in their hearts..who knows, but it is pretty awful when you think about it for two seconds, that is for sure.
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is a 1955 novel by Sloan Wilson about the American search for purpose in a world dominated by business. The main characters, Tom and Betsy Rath, are a young middle-class couple that share a struggle to find contentment in their hectic and material culture, while several other characters fight essentially the same battle, but for different reasons. In the end, it is a story about taking responsibility for one's own life.
The novel was the basis for the popular 1956 film of the same name starring Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones as Tom and Betsy Rath.
Winston Peters – will he ride (rise?) again? And the question about the new planned policies that bring Maori to the fore – will it lead to separatism and a schism despite attempts by thinkers to enable Maori to exert authority in ways satisfactory to them and within the purpose-built political system that NZ has attempted in fits and starts.
I reckon NZ First will return and without Winston at the helm. Winston was looking very tired during the last election champaign. Collins would be gleeful about no pay rise for public servants as this will give her milage until the next election or the person who cancels her leadership. The only saviour for the public service austerity is if WFF tops up the public service workers.
Money borrowed needs to be repaid, how and who repays it is the question?
In a statement, the university's proctor Dave Scott said it would only be used as a last resort. "The vast majority of our students do the right thing when it comes to rubbish. For those who do not, the process is firstly one of engagement and education where we work closely with students to seek the desired outcomes," he said…
Once a policeman, always…?
2018…Dave Scott, a former police officer, spoke to media on Tuesday, hours after he apologised to the Leith St occupants for his actions. The proctor's role is essentially a student supervisor…
Lawyers around New Zealand have said his actions could amount to unlawful entry. The University of Otago's proctor says he made an "error of judgment" entering a student flat and removing three bongs, but maintains he is no "criminal"…
The university could go into the rubbish removal business and employ some of the students to clean up the rubbish outside and encourage students to not hoard rubbish inside so the next rent rise could be afforded. Diversification is good and rubbish removal is profitable.
Sounds like a sound idea Treetop – using their initiative and youthful enthusiasm. The university has tried to help I must point out,. There is mention of a trailer that comes with brooms and shovels and if they can get it to the dump its free. However I still don't agree with daily fines; if you are in a shared flat everyone has to pull their weight and the burden would go on the one most worried about it. The rest may have wealthy daddies who would pay.
The obvious practical and timely way for those trying to cope and avoid a fine is to sneak out at night and leave it by rubbish bins away from their 'digs'. But people struggling to cope in some way, with their study to do and get in in time, it is I think hard. Perhaps sanctions like not being admitted to their favourite pub would work. They seem a boozy lot down there looking at media stories.
What about something like garden and section competitions where everyone could get a prize e.g. free rubbish bags, food cards when there is an improvement or consistency?
As for the bigger furniture items breaking them down and a free skip periodically as required. Never should a TV or microwave be broken down.
Simple – if they don't clean up their pigsty, evict them. I'll bet they wouldn't get away with this in their own homes. A free skip for furniture etc is probably a good idea, but ffs surely they can be expected to live like civilised people in a community.
Did Grant Robertson not really understand who would be affected by the pay freeze? Is it a manufactured response by the lower income workers and their unions as this article seems to imply – 'the narrative shifted'? The people at the lower end of the pay band were bound to be ropable about it.
“I don’t think that Labour was quite prepared for the outpouring from the public and in particular from the unions, says RNZ’s deputy political editor Craig McCulloch. “I think it was caught quite off guard by the fury and how quickly the narrative shifted to be about teachers, about nurses, about police officers….
But McCulloch says what’s happened instead is the idea of a responsible government reining in spending has been pushed aside and replaced with an image of a miserly, punitive one….
(Bank economist from usual cloud floating above our heads with perspective that money for the plebs comes from a pot of limited size to dependent Olivers).
Sharon Zollner, the chief economist of the ANZ, says last year’s massive wage subsidy saw us left with a huge debt for size of our economy – we have borrowed from the future… “It’s a tightening up – I mean it’s inevitable – well, hopefully – that the government is going to spend less in the next 12 months than it has in the last 12 months because that wage subsidy is one out of the box. It was massive. And something would have to go terribly horribly wrong in the economy for us to need to spend that much government money again,” she says. https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-detail/story/2018794549/pay-freezing-out-your-traditional-voter-base
Interesting to know –https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/442210/elon-musk-reveals-he-has-asperger-s "Look, I know I sometimes say or post strange things, but that's just how my brain works," he said. "To anyone who's been offended, I just want to say I reinvented electric cars, and I'm sending people to Mars in a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?"
.
https://www.healthline.com/health/aspergers-vs-autism Asperger's and autism are no longer considered separate diagnoses. People who may have previously received an Asperger's diagnosis instead now receive an autism diagnosis. But many people who were diagnosed with Asperger's before the diagnostic criteria changed in 2013 are still perceived as “having Asperger's.”16/04/2020
More boys than girls diagnosed, and when the diagnosis is reviewed previous ratios have decreased to about 3 male to 1 female.
.
https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/autisms-sex-ratio-explained/ Would the sex ratio disappear if these diagnostic biases could be overcome?
Probably not. Researchers have found a 3-to-1 ratio even when they have followed children from infancy and repeatedly screened them for autism, minimizing the possibility for biases in diagnosis and referral. The children in these studies have a family history of autism, however, so they may be fundamentally different from other children with the condition, says Daniel Messinger, professor of psychology at the University of Miami.
When historian Edith Sheffer arrived at the Vienna archives to learn more about Dr. Hans Asperger, a pediatrician credited with identifying and defining autism in the 1940s, she was excited to learn about the scientist. Her son had been diagnosed with Asperger’s when he was 17 months old.
But Sheffer did not find what she expected. “Literally, the very first file I found on my very first day was his district party file that testified to his involvement in the racial hygiene measures of the Third Reich,” she told me.
While Asperger was never a member of the Nazi Party, Sheffer discovered that he played a critical role in identifying children with disabilities and sending dozens to Spiegelgrund, a children’s ward in Vienna where adolescents were euthanized or subjected to experimentation. Her research culminated in her new book, Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna.
For Sheffer, the story is also personal because of her now middle-school-age son. And in light of Asperger’s past, a movement has sprung up, spearheaded by an 11-year-old boy with autism, to change the name from Asperger’s syndrome to social communication disorder. The Change.org petition has gathered more than 28,000 signatures as of Monday.
Well what an unpleasant connection between the condition and the name. I can understand a desire to cut that connection. It would be good to sign that petition and facilitate that.
Plenty of Aspies can't be assed with this name change. Aspies we are Aspies we'll be. People who are not Aspergers getting offended on our behalf should fuck off.
This article is two years old thanks for bringing your faux outrage back into the light. People in ASD groups are being asked to drop this shit and leave us alone.
And in light of Asperger’s past, a movement has sprung up, spearheaded by an 11-year-old boy with autism, to change the name from Asperger’s syndrome to social communication disorder.
Cool it WTB. If other people don't want the name why shouldn't they have the right to ask for the official name to change. No-one should can tell you change your way of describing it.
Why should I cool it. I'm not the non-ASD people using a years old article to be talking nonsense about all this. I have the condition, I research the condition. So read.
Aspergers was used to refer to 'high functioning' autistic people. High functioning is a misnomer, most of us need help in one or more areas or we struggle to become productive members of society. Correct diagnosis and help can make a big difference.
As a general rule all we want is to belong to a team and be able to contribute. Look at Elon's contribution, pretty damn good. I've invented things that'll help mankind too, just not as flashy, and I'm still poor, dirty smelly poor.
The term Aspergers was officially dropped because Autism is a spectrum, and the high functioning term was problematic with people expecting rain man to show up. That's why the change, but many Aspies simply stuck with what they knew. We, as a rule, don't enjoy change (unless we pioneer it).
My symptoms do not include genocidal. I couldn't care who Aspergers was, it's our word now even if it's going to disappear in a generation or two.
It sounds like a request for designation change. CFS has gone through different names – now Chronic Fatigue Syndrome but also Myalgic Encephylitis and others.
'Commerce Commission to Probe Building Materials Sector – Grant Robertson'
Houses in the US and Victoria and NSW are so much cheaper than NZ. Sure, we have earthquake resilience issues that Australia does not have and are a small market, but the materials being used here are very limited in variety compared to overseas, and comparitivly very high in cost. And labour very low.
So why such large differences in price? Lets hope this leads somewhere.
This is the link to the article, unfortunately paywalled.
No matter how much of a 'joke' Phil Twyford was, he was the only one in this government who actually tried to build houses. He did not succeed, thanks to private businesses and many other factors but at least he tried.
But for Grant to say after 9 years in opposition to National, and 4 years in government to 'pledge' a probe into the building monopolies in NZ just leaves me with one question. Where did Grant live the last 20 odd years, and how much of that time has he spend in Government? And he still needs to 'probe' the most open secret in NZ. Namely that end users are being screwed over by a few monopolies?
Yeah, three years at least, and then we will need to vote this guy back in again, so he can 'change ' it. Right? Do you really believe that? 🙂
A market study (referred to as a ‘competition study’ in the Bill) is a study into any factors that may affect competition for the supply or acquisition of goods or services.
Market studies:
provide a means of identifying what’s going on in a market and why
focus on the structure and behaviour of the market itself — as opposed to a competition enforcement investigation, which focuses on the actions of a specific company
can provide a market ‘a clean bill of health’ or make recommendations to address any impediments to competition.
major German-headquartered company is undercutting Fletcher Building by selling its insulation for half the price.
Stuart Dunbar, Knauf Insulation general manager for Australia and New Zealand, said his business was able to supply New Zealand builders with insulation for 50% less than Fletcher products.
He criticised high prices here and said competition was great for consumers and might help lower residential construction prices.
"The cost of building a house in New Zealand is amongst the highest in the world because components to make houses are more expensive," he said.
Commerce Commission inquiry needed into building supplies monopoly
The Commerce Commission must stop dragging the chain and urgently investigate the anti-competitive practices in the building industry that are driving up the cost of building materials, says Labour's Housing spokesperson Phil Twyford.
“Competition in the building materials market is essential to lowering building costs, according to the Productivity Commission’s analysis. But Knauf Plasterboard has said it is reviewing its position in New Zealand after posting a loss in its first nine months after struggling to break through the building materials monopoly.
oss of wallboards division defends 94 per cent market share as outcome of inquiry looms.
The head of Fletcher Buildings' Winstone Wallboards is defending its dominant New Zealand plasterboard position, as the company awaits a Commerce Commission ruling.
General manager David Thomas said Winstone Wallboards had a 94 per cent market share but only because it manufactured and delivered the best product to customers.
"People do have other options and they have had for the last 20 years," Thomas said, citing Elephant Plasterboard and other products including Chinese board.
sorry, but it is the best kept open secret in NZ, and it has been known for some years now. But i am happy to see that someone from the Labour Party pledges to do something. Soon.
The disagreement with Sabine isnt over the 'jacked up' prices for building supplies. Which are there. But powers of Commerce Commission ( which isnt productivity Commission)
I have personal experience in the pricing of windows and doors and NZ has a proliferation of small window assemblers and each house is different sized windows.
With scores of different colours to choose….like 8 different 'whites'
Australia seems happy to have some standard sizes for group builders and maybe 12-15 colours to choose from.
The NZ system for huge variation is mostly used in Australia for higher end archtectural homes… which we have as well on top of the 'standard ' designs
I am just amused that a man who spend his whole life in politics and no where else btw needs to have a thoothless body "study" the abuse of certain businesses in NZ to see if people are being screwed over. I still think its funny. 🙂
My personal opinion is simply that NZ is such a small market that most people are quite happy to screw everyone over in order to make a quick buck. And it does not matter if that is the cost of milk, butter, meat, carpet, wood, or crappy bendy aluminium windows. The only time kiwis seem to spend money is when they buy houses for their own use. If its a rental everything needs to be as cheap as possible, after all the tenants will just fuck it. Everything else is she'll be right.
And thus it is for all businesses down to the last one.
And you can study that for the next decade or several, i doubt he will change anything.
So, you don't have a disagreement with me. You just did not like that i think this is all very funny.
Yeh it’s a worry, Jimmy! I was there myself this morning after the school-run (fortunately not during the attack).
Though we’re not dealing with a criminal mastermind/ terrorist here. The police didn’t even bother putting him in the car, they just walked him across the carpark to the central police station right next door.
edit: I see the Herald also has that bit about the bystander seeing hysterical girls, assuming they were shoplifting and detaining (presumably by grabbing) them. How is that even an appropriate response, let alone legal? Though I imagine the police had other things on their mind, so it’ll end there.
It seems that random violence is showing up a bit everywhere. Stabbings today in Dunedin, the other day shootings in AKL, someone got bashed over the head in Invercargill, people killed in Wellington and Christchurch. It just seems to be way more then usual.
Homicides are running at similar levels to previous years.
Gun violence is definitely up and is connected to drug trade money and mostly gang members and associates ( some times other relatives like the grandmother in Favona)
This is seriously horrifying, yet also strangely poetic:
A spokesperson for the junta did not answer calls to request comment on the death of Khet Thi, who had penned the line “They shoot in the head, but they don’t know the revolution is in the heart.”…
“I was interrogated. So was he. They said he was at the interrogation centre. But he didn’t come back, only his body,” his wife, Chaw Su, told BBC Burmese language news .
“They called me in the morning and told me to meet him at the hospital in Monywa. I thought it was just for a broken arm or something … But when I arrived here, he was at the morgue and his internal organs were taken out,” she said.
She had been told at the hospital he had a heart problem
Water in Canterbury. When the rivers are no longer fed by snows from the mountains what will they do these farming and business pragmatists. Let 'them' suck cactus or something.
Canterbury Regional Council (ECan) is being accused of creating a monster that it can no longer control when it comes to degraded water quality in the region. That is according to Federation of Freshwater Anglers, which has been testing the Selwyn River and has found polluting nitrates have increased by up to 50 percent in the space of just 22 months.
The federation's president and long time angler Peter Trolove had been monitoring the Selwyn with the help of a nitrate tester, bought with a grant from a pub charity.
The Selwyn, which people could no longer swim in, was once a top trout fishing destination. "If you go back before World War Two, it was considered one of the top half dozen trout fisheries in the dominion. And they had fish counts of over 200,000 trout going up the river, and it's fallen to, well, I don't know if they find any now."
Fascinating seeing certain sections of the left show how absolutely out of touch they are by defending high paid civil servants and bureaucrats who have failed time and time again, at the border by embarrassing the govt with the fiasco earlier in the year, in our prisons, at OT , by making horrendous decisions in health. It's amazing to see certain factions of the left defend unelected useless civil servants with too much power and calling the govt anti union while govt implements strongest pro union reforms in decades.
There will be no solidarity with high paid MSD workers and their ilk and if the PSA thinks the public supports the people who blackmail poor people with their nudes and throw people off welfare it's so deliciously out of touch.
If the other unions about to receive more power who represent lower paid workers side with the PSA it'll mind blowingly self defeating and HILARIOUS.
I'm enjoying watching the wellington mafia and the green and Champagne socialists furious their mates will only get two visits to melbourne a year instead of three with an annual trip to europe (it's the bourgeoisie god given right 🤣) into some kind of attack on low paid workers from a govt that has continued raising min wage and even benefits and strengthened unions in an unprecedented economic crisis in a heavily neoliberal country.
I can't wait for MSD workers and ird workers who spend their lives ruining poor peoples lives and telling people to live within their means with signs saying "more money for msd case managers" delicious
Commissioner John Edwards has concluded that the ministry has been unjustifiably intruding on the lives of beneficiaries.
Since 2012, the ministry has been bypassing beneficiaries and going to third parties for information.
Mr Edwards said that's allowed fraud investigators to collect large amounts of highly sensitive information about beneficiaries without their knowledge.
The information collected included text messages, domestic violence and other police records, banking information and other billing records.
As part of the inquiry, Mr Edwards said they reviewed MSD files that contained text messages between couples, of a sexual or intimate nature.
"In one instance, a beneficiary described to us how MSD obtained, from a telecommunications company, an intimate picture shared by that individual with a sexual partner. The photograph was then produced at an interview by MSD investigators seeking an explanation for it."
Commissioner John Edwards has concluded that the ministry has been unjustifiably intruding on the lives of beneficiaries.
That started in the 1990s under the guidance of that dreadful woman, Christine Rankin. It was the start of the reign of terror known as the Benefit Fraud Squad made up of perfed police officers. They placed my 92 year old mother – who was quite frail with moderate dementia – and myself (her carer) under surveillance. They also rang a few times ostensibly to ask questions, but really checking whether I was there. I also witnessed them make a note of my car particulars parked in the driveway, so presumably they were planning to follow me in my car as well. After a very sharply worded letter to the local WINZ boss, the activity stopped.
Since then, I have had much empathy for beneficiaries suffering a similar fate who may not have the ability to be able to do what I did and get it stopped.
He also introduced new language for discussing the pay restraint’s bands.
“The guidance breaks down three categories for public sector pay, ‘lift’ (those at $60,000 or below), ‘adjust’ (those between $60 and $100,000) and ‘hold’ (those above $100,000).”
your wages aren't being frozen for three years, they are just on "hold".
Is this woman twisting the story more than a little? Especially at the end where she blames a man for believing a young woman who has lied about her age. It's All His Fault the rotter. She doesn't like males herself, but men who still like females are wrong is the message given.
That Greenburg/ Gaetz victim was known to them initially through an online tag that mentioned her birthyear wasn't she, Grey? Anyway – they are the adults, she was the child; so they were the ones who had the duty to be certain about her age, even if that killed the mood.
That said, one advantage of the pandemic has been that there have been fewer Yankee ephebophiles over in Aotearoa this past year. I don't pretend to understand why anyone would want to have sexual relations with a teenager – even another teenager! The allure of the forbidden? Something to do while over visiting their money in the NZ$ /Cook Islands tax haven? But there is apparently a fair bit of grey area between formal prostitution (restricted 18+) and sugar-daddies in our laws (blanket 16 year old consent age), or maybe just their enforcement?
Anyway; the Guardian article is mainly about maassassin's TikTok clips of being approached by a strange man for the first time. That; "nice to meet you too", automatically parroted while her body language was pleading; "please don't kill me", was quite saddening. But then many men don't realize quite how intimidating they can appear to strangers, and it's impossible to know what the rudely intrusive (at the very least) individual's own body language was like in that interaction. It is in the Opinion section, so I can't be too upset that Donegan is giving her own opinion in response to the footage.
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 ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Tuesday, March 19:Kāinga Ora’s dry rot The Spinoff DailyBill McKibben on ‘Climate Superfunds’ making Big Oil pay for climate damage The Crucial YearsPreston Mui on returning to 1980s-style productivity growth NoahpinionAndy Boenau on NIMBYs needing unusual bedfellows Urbanism SpeakeasyNed Resnikoff's case ...
Negative yesterday, negative today. Negative all year, according to one departing reader telling me I’ve grown strident and predictable. Fair enough. If it’s any help, every time I go to write about a certain topic that begins with C and ends with arrrrs, I do brace myself and ask: Again? Are ...
Bryce Edwards writes – It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support ...
Inspirational: The Family of Man is a glorious hymn to human equality, but, more than that, it is a clarion call to human freedom. Because equality, unleavened by liberty, is a broken piano, an unstrung harp; upon which the songs of fraternity will never be played.“Somebody must have been telling lies about ...
Tax Lawyer Barbara Edmonds vs Emperor Justinian I- Nolo Contendere: False historical explanations of pivotal events are very far from being inconsequential.WHEN BARBARA EDMONDS made reference to the Roman Empire, my ears pricked up. It is, lamentably, very rare to hear a politician admit to any kind of familiarity ...
It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support for the various parties in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Housing Minister Chris Bishop delivered news – packed with the ingredients to enflame political passions – worthy of supplanting Winston Peters in headline writers’ priorities. He popped up at the post-Cabinet press conference to promise a crackdown on unruly and antisocial state housing tenants. His ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The Reserve Bank is advertising for a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion advisor. The Bank has one mandate – to keep inflation between one and three percent. It has failed in that and is only slowly getting inflation back down to the upper limit. Will it ...
Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency Waka KotahiThe fact that a ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: Gavin Jacobson talks to Thomas Piketty 10 years on from Capital in the 21st CenturyThe SalvoLocal scoop: Green MP’s business being investigated over migrant exploitation claims StuffSteve KilgallonLocal deep-dive: The commercial contractors making money from School ...
It’s a home - but Kāinga Ora tenants accused of “abusing the privilege” may lose it. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government announced a crackdown on Kāinga Ora tenants who were unruly and/or behind on their rent, with Housing Minister Chris Bishop saying a place in a state ...
This is a guest post by Connor Sharp of Surface Light Rail Light rail in Auckland: A way forward sooner than you think With the coup de grâce of Auckland Light Rail (ALR) earlier this year, and the shift of the government’s priorities to roads, roads, and more roads, it ...
Note: As a paid-up Webworm member, I’ve recorded this Webworm as a mini-podcast for you as well. Some of you said you liked this option - so I aim to provide it when I get a chance to record! Read more ...
TL;DR: In my ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Monday, March 18:IKEA is accused of planting big forests in New Zealand to green-wash; REDD-MonitorA City for People takes a well-deserved victory lap over Wellington’s pro-YIMBY District Plan votes; A City for PeopleSteven Anastasiou takes a close look at the sticky ...
Buzz from the Beehive Here’s hoping for a lively post-cabinet press conference when the PM and – perhaps – some of his ministers tell us what was discussed at their meeting today. Until then, Point of Order has precious little Beehive news to report after its latest monitoring of the ...
David Farrar writes – We now have almost all 2023 data in, which has allowed me to update my annual table of how labour went against its promises. This is basically their final report card. The promiseThe result Build 100,000 affordable homes over 10 ...
I’m a bit worried that I’ve started a previous newsletter with the words “just when you think they couldn’t get any worse…” Seems lately that I could begin pretty much every issue with that opening. Such is the nature of our coalition government that they seem to be outdoing each ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. ...
Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and inclusion are offered in daylight, much of our culture ...
Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in an exit interview with Q+A yesterday the Government can and should sustain more debt to invest in infrastructure for future generations. Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 6:36am: Read more ...
Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. It is more than just a happy ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to March 18 include:China’s Foreign Minister visiting Wellington today;A post-cabinet news conference this afternoon; the resumption of Parliament on Tuesday for two weeks before Easter;retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson gives his valedictory speech in Parliament; ...
New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters’s state-of-the-nation speech on Sunday was really a state-of-Winston-First speech. He barely mentioned any of the Government’s key policies and could not even wholly endorse its signature income tax cuts. Instead, he rehearsed all of his complaints about the Ardern Government, including an extraordinary claim ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
“I’ve been internalising a really complicated situation in my head.”When they kept telling us we should wait until we get to know him, were they taking the piss? Was it a case of, if you think this is bad, wait till you get to know the real Christopher, after the ...
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Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
.“$10 and a target that bleeds” - Bleeding Targets for Under $10!.Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.This government appears hell-bent on either scrapping life-saving legislation or reintroducing things that - frustrated critics insist - will be dangerous and likely ...
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Bryce Edwards writes – Is another Green MP on their way out? And are the Greens severely tarnished by another integrity scandal? For the second time in three months, the Green Party has secretly suspended an MP over integrity issues. Mystery is surrounding the party’s decision to ...
For the last few years, the Green Party has been the party that has managed to avoid the plague of multiple scandals that have beleaguered other political parties. It appears that their luck has run out with a second scandal which, unfortunately for them, coincided with Golraz Ghahraman, the focus ...
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What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
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Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it: We want our country to be a ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation : The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
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Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
"The Government is moving quickly to realise an additional $46 million in tariff savings in the EU market this season for Kiwi exporters,” Minister for Trade and Agriculture, Todd McClay says. Parliament is set, this week, to complete the final legislative processes required to bring the New Zealand – European ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
Pacific Media Watch Earthwise hosts Lois and Martin Griffiths. Earthwise presenters Lois and Martin Griffiths on Plains FM 96.9 community radio talk to Dr David Robie, a New Zealand author, independent journalist and media educator with a passion for the Asia-Pacific region. David talks about the struggle to raise awareness ...
Pacific Media Watch Ismail al-Ghoul, an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent who was held for 12 hours at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, says Israeli forces rounded up Palestinian journalists at the facility and made them kneel on the ground for hours, while naked and blindfolded. “The occupation forces handcuffed and blindfolded us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute chinasong, Shutterstock Electricity customers in four Australian states can breathe a sigh of relief. After two years in a row of 20% price increases, power prices have finally stabilised. In many places they’re ...
Chumbawamba have reportedly issued the deputy PM a cease-and-desist notice after he used their song 'Tubthumping' before his state of the nation speech. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney kitzcorner/Shutterstock The assertion from Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Shutterstock Why are musicians so keen to get played on the radio? It can’t be because of the money. In Australia they are paid at rates so low they ...
"Farmers make a point not to tell our urban cousins how to live, yet Chlöe from central Auckland is hell-bent on having her say about farmers," says ACT Rural Communities spokesman Mark Cameron. “On her first day in the House as Green ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Curran, Associate Professor of Ecology, Lincoln University, New Zealand Getty Images/Gerald Corsi In the latest move to reform environmental laws in New Zealand, the coalition government has introduced a bill to fast-track consenting processes for projects deemed to ...
Uber has argued it does not have as much control over drivers as the unions suggest, and wants a judgment ruling that drivers are employees and not contractors set aside and sent back to the Employment Court. The 2022 ruling followed a three-week hearing in which four drivers sought to ...
What can and can’t be purchased by disabled people or their carers has been slashed in an effort by the Ministry of Disabled People Whaikaha to save money. The purchasing guidelines, a set of rules that sets out what can be purchased using the various streams of Government disability funding, ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Tod Wright and Hien Nguyen, Fiscal incidence in New Zealand: The effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes in tax year 2018/19 . Analyses of the distributional impact of taxation and government ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Cory Davis, Boston Hart and Benjamin Stubbing, Household cost-of-living impacts from the Emissions Trading Scheme and using transfers to mitigate regressive outcomes . This Analytical Note ...
A coalition of public transport and climate organisations, united as ‘Transport for All’, is actively opposing the government’s transport proposals. The draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) includes plans for higher fares for public transport, ...
Greater Wellington is inviting feedback on proposed changes to its Revenue and Financing Policy. The Revenue and Financing Policy covers the Council’s various sources of funding, and how the cost of services is shared across the region. This includes ...
Labour has conceded it could have done more to deal with disruptive state housing tenants while in government but says the current coalition is going too far. ...
The band has asked their record label to issue a cease and desist to stop the NZ First leader using their 1997 hit to support his ‘misguided political views’. “I get knocked down, but I get up again,” blared through the speakers on Sunday as Winston Peters took the stage ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
The long-running Wellington music festival is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness and not enough on the Homegrown-ness.There is something about Homegrown that’s difficult to place. A barely perceptible-ness. Like feeling a ghost is watching you from the corner of the room but when you look, there’s nothing there. ...
The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor reveals that fewer New Zealanders believe crime / law and order is one of the top issues facing our country. In 2018, Ipsos New Zealand started tracking the key issues facing New Zealand. In this wave ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Budgets and Government, Grattan Institute Australia’s political donations rules are woefully inadequate, but donations reform is finally on the agenda. The federal government has signalled its interest in reform and will soon begin briefing MPs on its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University Naiyana Somchitkaeo/Shutterstock A recent study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has linked microplastics with risk to human health. The study ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University Global climate records were shattered in 2023, from air and sea temperatures to sea-level rise and sea-ice extent. Scores of countries recorded their hottest year ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a teacher explains why he and his partner are in frugal mode – and how they’re making it work. Gender: Male Age: 35Ethnicity: Pākehā Role: I am an intermediate school teacher and my partner is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bendall, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University Binge Mary & George, the new British television drama series, depicts the real-life story of Mary Villiers and her son George, and their social climbing at the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Nassios, Associate Professor, Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University This article is part of The Conversation’s series examining the housing crisis. Read the other articles in the series here. Australian state and federal governments spend money in many ways to ...
The finance minister is denying that there’s a $5.6b shortfall in paying for the government’s campaign promises, including tax cuts. At his post-cabinet press conference yesterday, the PM refused to rule out new taxes to pay for the cuts, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s ...
Kāinga Ora tenants abused by their neighbours are doubting the government's crackdown on disruptive tenants will make a difference on their behaviour. ...
Kāinga Ora is New Zealand’s biggest residential landlord, housing more than 180,000 vulnerable people in more than 67,000 properties. Yesterday the government announced a crackdown on its tenants who fall behind on rent. One longtime Kāinga Ora tenant shares her experience.For 18 years I lived in a 1960s standalone ...
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Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A[quiz],DIV[quiz],A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Tuesday 19 March appeared first on Newsroom. ...
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They need to sort this quickly. Front line workers shouldn't be penalised for getting vaccinated.
Covid-19 coronavirus: Many port workers missing out on vaccine, union boss says – NZ Herald
The rise of the ghost development.
Have there been infil houses built in your street?
Are they still standing empty months aftter construction?
Micky Savage penned a post on the 30,000 empty houses in Auckland, (Now 40,000)
The Labour Government echoing the cries of the National opposition bought into the myth of not enough houses, the result was a building frenzy and now many of these newly built houses are standing empty, just waiting to be bulldozed.
We should have had an empty homes tax like they have in Vancouver.
Now it's too late.
Bring in an empty homes tax now and the banks and receivers will be even quicker to call in the bulldozers to avoiid paying it
An empty homes tax would be a good idea and it could be scaled.
It is never too late to rebalance the housing market or for the government to go back to the old state housing model (government control and funding) with modification where needed.
NZ never has had the State provide the majority of rental accommodation even at the height of State housing building post WWII.
… with modification where needed.
State housing needs to become competitive with home investors.
The way the numbers are written here casually suggests there are 40,000 empty newly built houses in Auckland standing empty, just waiting to be bulldozed.
Is that so?
Infill housing… standing empty. Yes.
Ive noticed that too. The ones Ive seen arent completely finished yet. Ive assumed its because they are rising in value so fast , why sell them now
Another article by Stuff on rent controls.
Explainer: What are rent controls, and would they actually make things better for renters? | Stuff.co.nz
Almost zero useful information in there.
Is the rent that a landlord gets considered as income?
If so a new tax could be implemented on a rent increase. Zero or minimal tax for a minimal rent rise and hefty for a hefty rent rise.
I am inclined to think that the rental income should be tax free, but replaced by a property tax based on the value of the value of the property.
The most political taboo sentence in NZ which is causing the most harm, is no new taxes on property.
Put another way the government are prepared to fund the social problems caused by the high rents and homelessness (and everything ugly as in between) but not to do what is needed. Tax to stop the gluttony of home investors.
Treetop, One of the great things about the NZ tax system is its simplicity. What you are proposing would be a chartered accountants wet dream.
Differential tax rates just encourages tax avoidance and creates yet another layer of unproductive government workers to arbitrarily administer it.
Must be a better way.
I knew a comment would be made about how impractical a tax on a rent rise would be.
I think it would be effective when it came to an improportional rent rise. The average home is now worth $900,000. Never enough for the landlords who have wealth in mortar. The line needs to be redrawn, some renters are suffering financially and emotionally and the homeless are the worst off. Extensive social and personal problems are being experienced by those who struggle.
When it comes to Work and Income the abatements for earnings above the allowed extra income there is a system to manage that. A system can be designed at IRD for rent increases.
“Must be a better way.”
Separate way of doing rental income???
Treetop, personally I think a meaningful Capital Gains Tax and one that is enforced.
Kill the speculators after capital gains and that will pressure rents downwards.
Capital Gains Tax is a politically taboo word.
Homelessness is not a politically taboo word.
It is necessary to do what you say, but the government will cut their nose off to spite their face.
I think that was a wise comment Treetops. I like some of the other ideas, but not to bring in something that doesn't stop rents from rising merely because the value of the property is rising because of housing inflation – that's through the roof!
Perhaps there should be an allowance for landlords to put rents up annually at the rate of the CPI and also if there was a rise in bank interest. Anything higher than that would have to be justified by producing documents showing remedial work done on the place, plus a physical inspection by a tax inspector – they miss nothing!
What has driven housing inflation to go through the roof?
Yes some sort of index needs to be used for a rent rise.
“Capital Gains Tax is a politically taboo word.”
A capital gains tax would also be pretty ineffectual. What is needed is a tax that is collected on a regular basis – annually, half-yearly, or suchlike – not one that is collected only after the house is sold.
To have any effect a tax would need to impact on a landlord's regular outgoings.
Mike, I understand your logic, but many landlords really are struggling from a revenue point of view, particularly as they have increasingly been loaded with additional expenses (insulation, heat pumps etc), and the phased removal of interest deductibility. Their entire investment model was based on capital gains.
Add on an additional tax, and almost certainly many will exit the market. Yes, that may be good for house prices, but I suspect the number of rentals available would dramatically drop, and consequently and ironically rents would increase.
This problem (rentals for tax free capital gain) was many years in the making. CBT is not a quick fix but would stop the speculators without harming the landlords in the here and now.
Mike, I understand your logic, but many landlords really are struggling from a revenue point of view,
Many landlords seem to have made some poor business decisions. It's about time we put them out of their misery. The alternative, CGT or Brightline Tax notwithstanding, will allow the present situation to continue indefinitely.
A property investors tax which treats the profit as secondary income.
Home investors have caused too much economic impact on the housing market, they have become like the banks in the US who caused the 2008 recession. The banks are also part of the problem financing those with collateral in the housing investment market.
A property investors tax which treats the profit as secondary income.
I would leave rental income untaxed, and replace it with a property tax of some sort. Of course, with rental income untaxed, expenses would not be deductible.
Like "Rates"? Or charged with the rates.
Yes or a CGT each year.
I do realise that the recent brightline test extention and the gradual loss of tax relief on interest for a housing loan will help. Whether or not this will be enough to rebalance the housing market will take time to be seen. I'd go full hog and just do what is needed immediately.
Yep Treetop. Early in the election cycle so good timing. It is necessary and just, so just do it Labour!
unproportional not
improportional.Disproportionate.
eg; There is a disproportionate amount of housing left vacant by landbanking profiteers considering NZ is swamped with both; primarily, and secondarily, homeless people. While maintenance & repairs may be safer & easier without occupying tenants, there has to be a limit. An empty building is not a residence, and should not be protected as such.
I have burst out laughing when I saw disproportionate as I was none the wiser until your comment.
An empty building is not a residence, and should not be protected as such.
I think I recall insurance providers needing to be told about homes being vacant after a time period.
Actually, Treetop; I mistook this thread for 2.2… rather than 3.2… so my comment was a bit out of place, being more about empty houses than rent control. Though they are but different aspects of the same issue. That stuff article didn't seem to be the NZI one that Swarbrick referred to (in link below), but Jimmy seemed to be saying that there's been a bit of a flurry recently.
This passage stood out to me:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2021/may/09/everyone-deserves-a-decent-secure-life-its-time-new-zealand-talked-about-rent-controls
I hope Peter @ 2.2 gets back to you!
Housing security is a basic human need so a person can flourish.
Ultra-conservatives kill 70 schoolgirls in Afghanistan:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/my-sister-had-so-many-dreams-kabul-blasts-kill-nearly-70-schoolgirls/GO7JJSXSSCJMZTXVFYXJA3U6VI/
The political right and their extreme hardline factions all over the world are responsible for the very worst atrocities we see today.
Afghanistan was always going to be another Vietnam. Senseless killing and fear until forced compliance and control is in the hands of those who commit the carnage.
Utterly heartbreaking.
Sadly most Islamic dominant countries are Conservative or, as you say, 'ultra Conservative'. The problem in these countries is religion, the more conservative the religion, the more 'right ' it tends to be.
Even in NZ, try visiting a Mosque. You will be made very welcome, but sadly the males and females are directed to separate rooms for prayer.
It's really weird that we allow that in nz! Try set up any male only section in a pub ,club or golf course and there would be an uproar, but chuck a bit of religion in and it's all good.
Try to set up boys or girls only schools in NZ … Oh, we do have single sex schools here … Sheesh.
Single sex schools are a shit idea imho.
From a geo-political perspective the land-locked, highly mountainous and fractured landscape ensured that Afghanistan was always going to be a relatively poor, tribal, fractured and conservative society. The elements of this play out everywhere.
That this geography is overlaid by an extremely conservative version of Islam is partly an accident of history, and partly a consequence of a religion that still struggles to separate state and mosque.
That the nation also lies at a strategic node in Asia, meaning it has been repeatedly invaded by everyone with an army for millenia, contributes to a highly insular political outlook.
Add all these things together and this horror bombing is merely another blood drenched paragraph in a massive volume of endless tragedy. And it seems no-one knows how to write an ending to it. Leave Afghanistan alone and they scribble more crazed prose like this; invade to impose modernity and they rebel with equal ferocity.
I'm not sure that it's at all useful to try and attribute 'blame' to a Gordian Knot like this – the roots of it are entangled deep in geography, history and ill-fortune. The scum who committed this bombing are of course absolutely culpable, but beyond this?
RL is so right about the invasions. They go back to Persian Conquests – Median c. 678 BC–c. 549 BC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medes
While relatively little detail is known, parts of the region of nowadays Afghanistan came under rule of the Median kingdom for a short time.
Afghanistan partially fell to the Achaemenid Empire after it was conquered by Darius I of Persia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasions_of_Afghanistan#Purpose
Help Afghanistanis by buying a war rug! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_rugs
@RedLogix, " Leave Afghanistan alone and they scribble more crazed prose like this; invade to impose modernity and they rebel with equal ferocity. "
Seriously….did you mean that to sound as racist as it is?
I know you are an imperialist at heart, but you usually hide it's racist root ideology a bit better than that.
Adrian, RL's post is no way racist. He explained very clearly why they are like they are today, a point further expanded upon by Grey.
The only bit RL missed is that the city dwellers in Afghanistan are very different, and want modernity, but the tribal areas are as RL said.
And as for racism, I had a Afghan taxi driver a few months back. I have never heard such unadulterated racist bigoted hate. Cuts both ways.
It reads like, 'we, the powerful and just' can either "leave Afghanistan alone", or "invade to impose modernity".
Adrian has a point, but I suspect it's simply arrogance and clumsiness from RL, rather than deep-seated racism.
" I suspect it's simply arrogance and clumsiness from RL, rather than deep-seated racism."…I know it is a serious thing to call someone out as a racist, but RL has a serious habit of describing the people living in third world countries in the way he did right there, like an old school imperialist (he is like listening to BBC archives sometimes)…personally I think he might be way too enamoured with his sacred 'geopolitical' world view, which is very problematic IMO.
No argument from me.
Peter chch I think that's a unique point – that the city dwellers and the tribal areas are coming from different places.
That has happened in India too and probably at the base of the terrible street crime which I think was of a group of men raping and then killing a young female student in a miniskirt (because she was improperly clothed in their beliefs?), and they attacked her male companion also.
Grey, TE Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) wrote a great book 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom' about his time in the Middle East in WW1.
Different area, but his insights I think are applicable to Afghanistan today in many ways. The desert Arabs were ultra conservative. The city Arabs largely embraced the Turkish and Western ways. The hill Arabs were altogether different again, as were coastal Arabs. Then you have religion (not all are Muslim by any means). Different sects within the religions. Differing tribal groups with differing culture. Bit of a tangle.
I well remember a book written by Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, a senior Taliban and Ambassador to Pakistan. Commenting on the destruction of the Buddhas in Bamiyan, he said (paraphrased) 'they might be Taliban, but not all Taliban have the same views. We could not stop them even though we tried'. Complex area for sure!
" The political right and their extreme hardline factions all over the world are responsible for the very worst atrocities we see today."
I think you left out the most important one…the extreme centre and their hardline fractions who are also all over the world causing untold misery and death…which only plays right into the hands of all the religious and political right extremists the world over, creating a cynical symbiotic loop that often benefits them both.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmge7_-8wN4
Yes but not just 'right'.
The USSR in Afghanistan engaged in total war from 1979 To mid 80s. 3 million refugees fled to Pakistan, from where the Taliban developed and the medieval theocracy of the next 20 years Spread across the border back to Afghanistan.
Well yes and no, yes the Russian invasion was a disaster for the people of Afghanistan, however the US had started arming and supporting the anti communist Islamists for their own reasons well before the '79 invasion and that group armed by the US is the 'medieval theocracy' that you speak of., which is exactly my point, the west (extreme centre) support/arm/enable even the most horrific leaders around the world if it suits their purpose…regardless of down stream negative effects on the population of those countries or their neighbours.
BTW If the Russians or Iranians had armed the Taliban to the level that the US armed the Mujahideen, the US would have left Afghanistan a long time ago.
The USSR was asked by the communist Afghan government for assistance in fighting internal enemies. In fact, the Russians were very reluctant to get involved at first, to the point that they suggested to president that he may need to water down his policies a little bit.
Thats like saying, quite correctly, the South Vietnamese government asked for the US help. It kind of misses the mark.
I think you will find that this was a religious sectarian event by the Sunnies against the Shias. A religious disagreement rather than a political act against those whom they do not consider true muslims..
It is still an act by conservative extremists even if in a conservative society.
It is the conservatism which defines them; religiously, socially, and politically.
Also what defines them is that they act in such a way, believing that differences that exist between people can justify the killing of 70 innocent girls.
Totally agree with Ardern's perspective on the Public Service pay freeze:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/ardern-says-public-sector-pay-freeze-excludes-the-too-many-low-paid-workers-in-nz/GQQJ5M6JAKZQ2ZOOXZS54LBCGM/
This over the top reflex action from the PSA and CTU is disingenuous and reeks of greed in an unprecedented economic climate caused by a raging pandemic.
I am curious, is the $60,000 the base rate salary or does that include penal rates eg time and a half or anti-social hours allowance?
A general question, not necessarily for you to answer, Anne.
I am a former public servant who worked shifts.
No. The base salary rate does not include penal rates and shift allowances. They are earned over and above one's salary and vary from pay packet to pay packet (so to speak) depending on an individual's roster rotations.
Thanks.
How disengenous is the PM. So the lack of pay band movement is ineffect a pay cut (and for those at the end of the band nothing)and in 4 years time when these get renegotiated Will the 4 year period of no movement be a starting point then add on pay increases? I think not
Yet the PM and MO’s will be benchmarked to the private sector so their increase will be adjusted to take into account the nil increases as the Remuneration Authority needs to maintain relativity.
“it just didn't give any room for those pay bands to be adjusted, she said.”
Perpahs this commentary to protect the poor is to cover up all the housing issues that have been failed to be addressed by the govt and the costs that have been incurred by many.
You really need to do something about this anti- government (read Ardern) paranoid condition you have been exhibiting for a long time now. I suggest you open up and admit you are really just trolling this site. It will make you feel a lot better. It really will.
Unfortunately Anne this Labour government's behaviour is open to criticism. Many who visit and write on this site are interested in the treatment of all citizens by government over a wide area of responsibilities, and where the Left is drifting off the course it set itself earlier in the 20th century, not just particular areas of personal concern.
You really need to do something about this anti- government (read Ardern) paranoid condition you have been exhibiting for a long time now. I suggest you open up and admit you are really just trolling this site. It will make you feel a lot better. It really will .
You know Anne, don't you, that calling into question the mental health of someone who disagrees with you says more about you than it does about your victim?
I disagree. reading many of herodotus' posts tells me more about their state of mind than reading annes posts. one comes across as open-minded, the other …not
Well Woodart that's your opinion and as someone who has suffered her personal abuse, I disagree.
As Grey says, this Labour government is open to criticism.
On TS we probably agree in general with the aims, but the 'Left' is a broad church and not all of us are slavishly members of a tribe and will support them regardless of what they do. Does not make H a troll. Why are some in the Left so self righteous and abusive to even mild dissenting viewpoints?
I think that is called democracy….
"why are some in the left so self righteous that they need to find an argument that doesnt concern them". there, fixed it for you. maybe, we should all look at the u.k. and see what endless bickering does for political stability. or, how to achieve defeat out of an expected victory. democracy is NOT an excuse to constantly whinge about the little details. (that last line will start whingeing about the right to whinge).
Agree re UK bickering, but dissent can be very positive, just so long as it is not endless bickering!
'Whinging about the right to whinge'. Classic line!
"and see what endless bickering does for political stability. or, how to achieve defeat out of an expected victory."What is the point of victory if those in need under National are still in need under Labour ? You could read from your comments that winning is everything denying the other side at all costs is all that matters.
This century we had had poor opposition, who then holds the government to account ? And what of those who benefited under National now receiving super profits under the policies of the current govt? IMO those who have supported the government need to raise their voices and speak out for those voiceless soles being left behind or being treated poorly/forgotten e.g. homeless, those in slum government paid short term accomodation. What was promised and why is delivery slow or not at all or areas within NZ that need attention e.g. The Environment and its climate consequences. Sure no government is perfect and issues will get missed,
I think some here have to open their eyes to see what is out there, or do you want this to be an ego chamber that the PM and Labour are just IT ??? This Labour party maybe the best for government at the moment given the options. BUT that does not mean to say that they do not have faults. This government (labour) has been in for 4 years now, and unless those who support do not demand that issues/faults are addressed then where do we go ??
And unlike you I would like to see things within NZ to improve, and if you follow any of my comments you will see I am firmly for the housing market to be sorted as IMO most of the problems arise from this, and labour are NOT doing it.
PM Ardern is talking about pay parity. This seem to mean that everybody will now earn the same for quite some time whilst the payback of the billions will need a bit more than that.
The issue is inflation, already going up with rates, rents and you know "healthy" food on the increase. (Roof over the head, food on the table, clothes on your back). It would not be so inconceivable if GST would go up. If wages are not, than you earn less. If you have a mortgage it will bite as interest rates will go back up again , maybe 2022? or later. (Roof over the head, food on the table, clothes on your back)
Selective austerity. Needs to start with a CGT to stem housing inflation, exempting the family home. Ardern has lost votes by not giving a wage increase to those on 60k and landlords votes are more important.
Is there a hidden message to landlords that those on $60k cannot afford a rent rise?
1 million each week is pumped into landlords accounts every week. Perhaps we should look at ways to stop that.
1 million a day is spend on housing homeless in slums.
Is there another layer to the housing crisis?
The cost of emergency housing 1 mil a day is here to stay unless the government find an alternative other than motels or hotels. A bed to sleep in is a human right.
I could not erase Treetoo.
[user name fixed]
The govt simply made a dumb mistake reverting to the 'sound finance' view when its gone out of fashion (even with the IMF). But when the public observed the 2020 wage subsidy coming in after years/a full decade of insistance on public spending limits the game was up on that narrative and people realised that the NZ govt doesn't face a budget constraint (e.g if it puts spending into the budget then that spending goes ahead).
While the govt are now trying to rewrite the narrative to say lower income pay rises will be prioritised, this doesn't require a spending cap but does require a review of public sector pay gradients. In fact a reasonable flattening would probably raise the public wage bill quite a bit, not shrink it.
What I expect as an outcome is the typical, some will be successfully promoted rapidly enough to get around it. Those who don't or can't work around the pay systems in their organisations will bare the brunt with no/minimal pay advances for several years. Some will go across into contracting, actually costing more and also removing accountability for delivery out of public institutions, and some will take their efforts away from the public sector.
Thank goodness we do not need a talented and motivated public sector to work on anything over the next few years, like poverty and climate action.
Timing your ideologically motivated beltches wrong can be very politically costly. This is of course exactly on form from Labour who truely believe in their superior management of the economy supposedly leading to a rising economy based on govt surpluses (and paying no attention to expanding housing debt).
Yes, the country will need an effective and motivated public sector in the near future. Labour may need to give up their 'better economic managers' mentality before this can be fully and openly adopted.
Cynical much?
"The events of the past week – so at odds with the old rules of the game – would suggest that not only have the rules changed radically, but so, too, has the name of the game itself. What our politicians now appear to be playing is a game called “Holding On To Power At All Costs”. It is predicated on voters having a smaller set of principles, and a larger collection of prejudices. A greater propensity to complain, but a reduced willingness to do anything more than post their displeasure on social media. Most important of all, it assumes that voters are rapidly losing the ability to act consistently from first principles; and that they no longer expect their politicians and political parties to even try."
https://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/110320/chris-trotter-argues-labour-has-thrown-out-old-political-rule-book-and-new-game-they
Holding On To Power At All Costs' ?
Well, if that was the case Labour would be doing the opposite to what they have done. That is, not only removing the pay freeze but giving the Pub. Servants a pay increase – at the expense of the lowest paid workers in the country.
Not if they charm the national voter to keep them in power.
Labour won the Covid election with a majority thanks to National voters.
As a result, we now have a single majority party that is tinkering on all edges but hardly doing anything at all. And the opposition is useless, either shattered as the National Party, or beginners as the Maori Party or more or less silent as is the Green Party.
And the stuff they do, comes several years late and chances are with not enough money, and oh, surely because some IT network needs to be redone, by hte highest bidder of course. Greasing hands makes for good future jobs.
The self test for cervical cancer that has been cancelled in 2018 to suddenly have priority is the best example. But then now there is a Labour person seriously ill with cervical cancer and a minister to boot, so yeah, i guess its now important. Now a cynical person like me will say that they need to throw money at this issue now, considering that one of their own has a good chance of dying. So here the party is doing the right thing, but 4 years to late, at least for that one person that is currently undergoing Cancer treatment.
National voters don't care one bit if poor people get poorer, if homeless people stay homeless, if poor kids schools fall apart with moldy rooms fit only for demolition. And Labour atm is by all means nothing more then National light. But with added kindness and withs some gentleness sprinkles in pretty sparkly colors..
Labour currently is not even trying to please the left, they like their very moderate, very conservative, national voters who like a surplus, so that when national wins again, national again has tax cuts to offer.
These two parties sit in the same boat, and they rowing in the same direction. Most of us however are not in the boat, and we are lucky when there is some debris to hold on to before drowining.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2021/05/kiri-allan-s-cancer-diagnosis-didn-t-push-govt-s-decision-on-hpv-self-swab-jacinda-ardern.html
If you can’t ‘hear’ the Green Party you may have to turn on the ‘sound’.
Please stop
eatingsmoking your ownchocolatedope.Dear Incognito,
considering that you are so concerned with people not making stuff up, please do not accuse people here on the Standard of drug use unless you have good proof that they do indeed take drugs. Some might really just disagree with you, and you could also get a person in legal trouble with you making up these stories.
As for the timing of the funding of this particular test:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/125075564/cervical-cancer-selftest-to-be-available-from-2023-should-reduce-health-inequality-for-whine-mori
from 2021 https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/124534892/women-keep-dying-of-preventable-cervical-cancer-while-selftest-screening-delayed
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018790464/health-leader-baffled-why-hpv-self-test-not-govt-funded
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/300277598/gps-call-for-hpv-selftests-as-current-cancer-screening-not-as-good-as-it-could-be
as I said, i am a cynical person, and there were more then just I who asked why the self test that was to be rolled out in 2018 was cancelled again and again for lack of funding, and now suddenly there is funding.
Personally i am very happy that it will hopefully be rolled out sooner rather then later, as quite a few women actually have issues with a GP or an OBGYN poking around in their private parts. But excuse me if I find the sudden announcement forced by happenings rather tehn budgeted.
Because that number of a 160 was the number for 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and now 2021. Kiri Allan is just one of many.
And consider that women in this country are already on an IT database for cervical cancer smears and mamographies, so really it must be the most complicated IT system Ever.
Smoking your own dope is an old saying.
You were wrong about the Government’s decision/announcement about cancer detection.
You were wrong about the Green Party being and staying silent.
You don’t know the slightest about Government IT systems.
The Easter Bunny was a dope but he ended up in a caserole.
Smoking your own dope is an old saying.
I very much doubt that.
Been around almost 40 years. Longer than than the quest to discover who let the dogs out.
I've been around for a lot longer than 40 years and I've never heard it before. And in any case I don't think it can be classified as a "saying".
Your concerns have been noted and are on the agenda for the next Board meeting.
There are completely separate databases for each screening programmes (with their own laws even in some cases), and NZ’s health IT systems are old and disconnected. A limited pool of suitable people is available to do the IT work, because that part of the health system has not been invested in enough by any governments in recent decades.
That is why the change to cervical self-screening was never started. It was not "cancelled" and the hold up was of official approval rather than 'funding' as such.
Without proper systems to manage risk and quality, no government in the world will launch any screening programme.
Bowel screening had to wait for that too. Breast screening is up for a major IT rework, including managing over 200k women who the current system misses out. About time.
Lucky we need IT system, cause we don't have NZ first anymore.
This thing was to be rolled out in 2018 and has been cancelled every year since, and please feel free to google this and read the pleads by variouos health official ( i have linked to some of them above) as to why this was cancelled and why it was not restarted and such. Lucky now we only have to wait till 2023 for the IT system to be rolled out or something.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/125075564/cervical-cancer-selftest-to-be-available-from-2023-should-reduce-health-inequality-for-whine-mori
Quote:
After a five-year campaign by the medical community, highlighted by Minister Kiri Allan’s diagnosis in April, this change could see 1.4 million eligible women able to self-test from 2023.
2017 – 160 women, 2018 – 160 women, 2019 – 160 women, 2020 – 160 women, 2021 – 160 women, 2022 – 160 women………..
i guess the cancer treatment costs should have been taken into account as to what is more affordable, chemo treatment, lost hours worked, lost income, dead women, widowers with children etc etc etc, all cheaper then that much vaunted IT system.
Sure, thing. Makes sense. Right? 🙂
It has not been cancelled. Please engage your eyes and ears before your fingers.
There seems little point sharing any more of what I know about both screening and health IT.
cancelled/ pushed out / put on ice/ in 2018
funding cancelled/pushed out / delayed again – Covid is the culprit
Funding is requried and demands action from the government
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/124534892/women-keep-dying-of-preventable-cervical-cancer-while-selftest-screening-delayed
I feel very comfortable with my thought that this would still not be an issue for Grant to fund – considering that they could not find the money the last four years, and that if Kiri Allan had not been diagnosed with advanced cervical cancer, nothing much could be done. I can not see an IT system that complicated and costly, but then i don't work in Government and thus don't know how many people need to make money first on the IT system before the life of women is factured in the cost of that IT system.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/439879/labour-mp-kiri-allan-reveals-she-has-been-diagnosed-with-cervical-cancer
Please read what I have already written above about everything you just repeated. You saying it again and again does not make it true but it might mislead others.
Sacha you saying it has not been 'cancelled' but pushed up or held up or reconsidered or or or
fact is the initial roll out was planned for 2018 – i have provided ample evidence of that – coming from Health Leaders in this country btw, and it is now finally been giving funding – that was asked for several times by Healthleaders in this Country – again i provided evidence of that.
It is now planned to be rolled out in 2023.
So the IT system did not receive funding in 2018 or earlier, did not receive funding in 2019, 2020, and is still not working until 2023 because it will take three years for a component to be build to be tacked on to an already existing IT system. As per my last posts.
So you can argue about the word 'cancelled' and disagree with me until the cows come home, but never the less the fact stands that we don't have this self test available, because Funding was not granted by this government last time and now it came about because of the negative press in regards to the 'cancellation of the rollout' due to Kiri Allens diagnose.
And no matter how many will protest to the contrary and that includes the Prime Minister, the optics speak for itself.
But feel free to believe that we really did not have the money to create that extra data base for 1.7 million women who currently get either a phone call or a letter from their GP to remind them of their anual pap smear, or the letter from the DHB to remind them of their mammograms.
Feel free to read all the links that i have provided for you so that you see that I in fact make nothing up, and thus don't risk to mis-inform anyone. And considering that many many health official have literally begged this government over the last few years to finally get going on this, i am in very good company in my believes.
You are not listening. It was never about money.
I am familiar not only with all the articles you have linked but with screening programmes and the NZ health system, especially the IT side. You are embarrassing yourself.
And the approval was in process before Kiri Allen became news. Honestly it's like watching someone try to pin reasons for a political poll result to something that randomly occurred in the same week rather than months earlier.
Nothing occurred randomly Sacha.
A prominent person of the Labour party got very very sick, due to not undergoing a pretty invasive method to obtain a pap smear.
The program that could have done a better job of providing said Labour person with a private at home self test was rejected/cancelled several times due to lack of funds (this is evident per the articles that i have linked to – its in the words 'FUNDING was not provided'.
And please provide a citation or link to the fact that the approval of funds was in process before Kiri Allen was diagnosed with a Stage 3 cervical Cancer with a 16% survival chance. Cause that is what it means to women and people with female centric plumbing who don't get tested in time due to what ever reason, and above all because they could not get it done at home.
It was always only ever about money, and that is the best reason i give this government. Any other reason would be callous, inhumane, and chances are has cost the live of quite a few women and others.
Bad press about the self tests not being made available, Health leaders pleading with government as to why this is not done and voila
You are embarrassing yourself in repeating that this is not connected, and that the only reason this did not happen is an IT program. It has been several years now for this much vaunted IT program to be written and implemented.
I sure hope you are better at running a shop.
Here is an interesting interview with ex CIA officer Philip Agee..while watching it one can't help but wonder how it was so easy for so many so called left wingers to have just jumped straight into bed with this nefarious group of terrorists first over Trump/Russia and then Syria and now China (not to mention Venezuela)….the only conclusion one can come too is that these people never really believed in any progressive left project to start with, and that a deep rooted imperialist tendency was always lurking just below the surface in their hearts..who knows, but it is pretty awful when you think about it for two seconds, that is for sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvZQa0hkfgw
Puts me in mind of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_Gray_Flannel_Suit_(novel)
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is a 1955 novel by Sloan Wilson about the American search for purpose in a world dominated by business. The main characters, Tom and Betsy Rath, are a young middle-class couple that share a struggle to find contentment in their hectic and material culture, while several other characters fight essentially the same battle, but for different reasons. In the end, it is a story about taking responsibility for one's own life.
The novel was the basis for the popular 1956 film of the same name starring Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones as Tom and Betsy Rath.
Putin dupes are no authority on the Left.
Winston Peters – will he ride (rise?) again? And the question about the new planned policies that bring Maori to the fore – will it lead to separatism and a schism despite attempts by thinkers to enable Maori to exert authority in ways satisfactory to them and within the purpose-built political system that NZ has attempted in fits and starts.
https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/2021/05/hiding-he-puapua-from-winston-may-cost.html
I reckon NZ First will return and without Winston at the helm. Winston was looking very tired during the last election champaign. Collins would be gleeful about no pay rise for public servants as this will give her milage until the next election or the person who cancels her leadership. The only saviour for the public service austerity is if WFF tops up the public service workers.
Money borrowed needs to be repaid, how and who repays it is the question?
You and i via taxes, levies, rates, fines, lisences, and all the other stuff that you need to give the government a cut.
T'was always the way.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/442209/otago-students-hit-back-at-uni-s-rubbish-plan-targeting-their-homes
The changes to the Code of Student Conduct, if accepted, would allow the university's proctor to impose a daily fine on students in flats littered with rubbish to a degree it had "an adverse effect on the visual amenity of that place or property"…
In a statement, the university's proctor Dave Scott said it would only be used as a last resort.
"The vast majority of our students do the right thing when it comes to rubbish. For those who do not, the process is firstly one of engagement and education where we work closely with students to seek the desired outcomes," he said…
Once a policeman, always…?
2018…Dave Scott, a former police officer, spoke to media on Tuesday, hours after he apologised to the Leith St occupants for his actions. The proctor's role is essentially a student supervisor…
Lawyers around New Zealand have said his actions could amount to unlawful entry.
The University of Otago's proctor says he made an "error of judgment" entering a student flat and removing three bongs, but maintains he is no "criminal"…
Scott said he entered the flat while delivering information on how to be a good host.
He went to flat in question and found the rear sliding door "wide open"…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/107362366/university-of-otago-proctor-speaks-about-bongtaking-incident
The university could go into the rubbish removal business and employ some of the students to clean up the rubbish outside and encourage students to not hoard rubbish inside so the next rent rise could be afforded. Diversification is good and rubbish removal is profitable.
Sounds like a sound idea Treetop – using their initiative and youthful enthusiasm. The university has tried to help I must point out,. There is mention of a trailer that comes with brooms and shovels and if they can get it to the dump its free. However I still don't agree with daily fines; if you are in a shared flat everyone has to pull their weight and the burden would go on the one most worried about it. The rest may have wealthy daddies who would pay.
The obvious practical and timely way for those trying to cope and avoid a fine is to sneak out at night and leave it by rubbish bins away from their 'digs'. But people struggling to cope in some way, with their study to do and get in in time, it is I think hard. Perhaps sanctions like not being admitted to their favourite pub would work. They seem a boozy lot down there looking at media stories.
What about something like garden and section competitions where everyone could get a prize e.g. free rubbish bags, food cards when there is an improvement or consistency?
As for the bigger furniture items breaking them down and a free skip periodically as required. Never should a TV or microwave be broken down.
Simple – if they don't clean up their pigsty, evict them. I'll bet they wouldn't get away with this in their own homes. A free skip for furniture etc is probably a good idea, but ffs surely they can be expected to live like civilised people in a community.
God forbid students should be expected not to create eyesores and health hazards.
God forbid that you should ever stop shooting off one-liners short of the mark.
Move along madam, nothing to see here. Ello ello ello.
Did Grant Robertson not really understand who would be affected by the pay freeze? Is it a manufactured response by the lower income workers and their unions as this article seems to imply – 'the narrative shifted'? The people at the lower end of the pay band were bound to be ropable about it.
“I don’t think that Labour was quite prepared for the outpouring from the public and in particular from the unions, says RNZ’s deputy political editor Craig McCulloch.
“I think it was caught quite off guard by the fury and how quickly the narrative shifted to be about teachers, about nurses, about police officers….
But McCulloch says what’s happened instead is the idea of a responsible government reining in spending has been pushed aside and replaced with an image of a miserly, punitive one….
(Bank economist from usual cloud floating above our heads with perspective that money for the plebs comes from a pot of limited size to dependent Olivers).
Sharon Zollner, the chief economist of the ANZ, says last year’s massive wage subsidy saw us left with a huge debt for size of our economy – we have borrowed from the future…
“It’s a tightening up – I mean it’s inevitable – well, hopefully – that the government is going to spend less in the next 12 months than it has in the last 12 months because that wage subsidy is one out of the box. It was massive. And something would have to go terribly horribly wrong in the economy for us to need to spend that much government money again,” she says.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-detail/story/2018794549/pay-freezing-out-your-traditional-voter-base
So a media outlet, who has just reported 'outrage' says the Government didnt expect said 'outrage'
The rest is rubbish a reputable organisation should check before publishing
' massive wage subsidy saw us left with a huge debt for size of our economy '
Zollner , from BNZ who was wrong about almost everything and the economic impact of covid
It was $13 bill, which wasnt 'huge' in terms of NZs economy of $200 bill.
ghost Rubbish is it. Your opinion is always so direct and correct.
Sharon Zollner makes my blood boil when she progosticates on the economy…surely track record counts for something
Interesting to know – https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/442210/elon-musk-reveals-he-has-asperger-s
"Look, I know I sometimes say or post strange things, but that's just how my brain works," he said.
"To anyone who's been offended, I just want to say I reinvented electric cars, and I'm sending people to Mars in a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?"
.
https://www.healthline.com/health/aspergers-vs-autism
Asperger's and autism are no longer considered separate diagnoses. People who may have previously received an Asperger's diagnosis instead now receive an autism diagnosis. But many people who were diagnosed with Asperger's before the diagnostic criteria changed in 2013 are still perceived as “having Asperger's.”16/04/2020
More boys than girls diagnosed, and when the diagnosis is reviewed previous ratios have decreased to about 3 male to 1 female.
.
https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/autisms-sex-ratio-explained/
Would the sex ratio disappear if these diagnostic biases could be overcome?
Probably not. Researchers have found a 3-to-1 ratio even when they have followed children from infancy and repeatedly screened them for autism, minimizing the possibility for biases in diagnosis and referral. The children in these studies have a family history of autism, however, so they may be fundamentally different from other children with the condition, says Daniel Messinger, professor of psychology at the University of Miami.
https://www.vox.com/conversations/2018/5/22/17377766/asperger-nazi-rename-syndrome
Well what an unpleasant connection between the condition and the name. I can understand a desire to cut that connection. It would be good to sign that petition and facilitate that.
signed. Thanks for bringing that up.
Plenty of Aspies can't be assed with this name change. Aspies we are Aspies we'll be. People who are not Aspergers getting offended on our behalf should fuck off.
This article is two years old thanks for bringing your faux outrage back into the light. People in ASD groups are being asked to drop this shit and leave us alone.
Thank you.
Cool it WTB. If other people don't want the name why shouldn't they have the right to ask for the official name to change. No-one should can tell you change your way of describing it.
Why should I cool it. I'm not the non-ASD people using a years old article to be talking nonsense about all this. I have the condition, I research the condition. So read.
Aspergers was used to refer to 'high functioning' autistic people. High functioning is a misnomer, most of us need help in one or more areas or we struggle to become productive members of society. Correct diagnosis and help can make a big difference.
As a general rule all we want is to belong to a team and be able to contribute. Look at Elon's contribution, pretty damn good. I've invented things that'll help mankind too, just not as flashy, and I'm still poor, dirty smelly poor.
The term Aspergers was officially dropped because Autism is a spectrum, and the high functioning term was problematic with people expecting rain man to show up. That's why the change, but many Aspies simply stuck with what they knew. We, as a rule, don't enjoy change (unless we pioneer it).
My symptoms do not include genocidal. I couldn't care who Aspergers was, it's our word now even if it's going to disappear in a generation or two.
Is he preparing a legal defence?
It sounds like a request for designation change. CFS has gone through different names – now Chronic Fatigue Syndrome but also Myalgic Encephylitis and others.
'Commerce Commission to Probe Building Materials Sector – Grant Robertson'
Houses in the US and Victoria and NSW are so much cheaper than NZ. Sure, we have earthquake resilience issues that Australia does not have and are a small market, but the materials being used here are very limited in variety compared to overseas, and comparitivly very high in cost. And labour very low.
So why such large differences in price? Lets hope this leads somewhere.
This is the link to the article, unfortunately paywalled.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/commerce-commission-to-probe-building-materials-sector-grant-robertson/YNTDJTUVVEGEREO5JBFYNL5PBQ/
how many years will this probe need?
Because people here have often spoken about the monopolies certain companies in NZ have in regards to building supplies?
Three years? 🙂 Oh well, things will go better soon then.
I won't hold my breath Sabine, although Grant Robertson does seem to deliver on his statements.
Three years ago in 2018, Phil Twitford promised the exact same thing, but we all know what a joke he was!
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/are-building-products-a-rip-off-or-good-value/CQ7EQQZ2ASCBVECH7XLVE3ZMOA/
No matter how much of a 'joke' Phil Twyford was, he was the only one in this government who actually tried to build houses. He did not succeed, thanks to private businesses and many other factors but at least he tried.
But for Grant to say after 9 years in opposition to National, and 4 years in government to 'pledge' a probe into the building monopolies in NZ just leaves me with one question. Where did Grant live the last 20 odd years, and how much of that time has he spend in Government? And he still needs to 'probe' the most open secret in NZ. Namely that end users are being screwed over by a few monopolies?
Yeah, three years at least, and then we will need to vote this guy back in again, so he can 'change ' it. Right? Do you really believe that? 🙂
So cynical Sabine! But I daresay you are right.
No Sabine is most definitely NOT right.
Until recently with the passing of the Commerce Amendment Act there was no power for the monopolies/duopolies etc to hand over their most sensitive costs and prices to any inquiry.
from 2012
https://www.odt.co.nz/business/german-based-group-undercuts-fletcher-half
from 2014
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1411/S00151/inquiry-needed-into-building-supplies-monopoly.htm
sorry, but it is the best kept open secret in NZ, and it has been known for some years now. But i am happy to see that someone from the Labour Party pledges to do something. Soon.
So did Fletchers just promise to boycott any retailer stocking Knauf?
it seems that you can find the product here online – can't find any retailers on their site, so who knows. 🙂
https://www.knaufinsulation.co.nz/
The disagreement with Sabine isnt over the 'jacked up' prices for building supplies. Which are there. But powers of Commerce Commission ( which isnt productivity Commission)
I have personal experience in the pricing of windows and doors and NZ has a proliferation of small window assemblers and each house is different sized windows.
With scores of different colours to choose….like 8 different 'whites'
Australia seems happy to have some standard sizes for group builders and maybe 12-15 colours to choose from.
The NZ system for huge variation is mostly used in Australia for higher end archtectural homes… which we have as well on top of the 'standard ' designs
I am just amused that a man who spend his whole life in politics and no where else btw needs to have a thoothless body "study" the abuse of certain businesses in NZ to see if people are being screwed over. I still think its funny. 🙂
My personal opinion is simply that NZ is such a small market that most people are quite happy to screw everyone over in order to make a quick buck. And it does not matter if that is the cost of milk, butter, meat, carpet, wood, or crappy bendy aluminium windows. The only time kiwis seem to spend money is when they buy houses for their own use. If its a rental everything needs to be as cheap as possible, after all the tenants will just fuck it. Everything else is she'll be right.
And thus it is for all businesses down to the last one.
And you can study that for the next decade or several, i doubt he will change anything.
So, you don't have a disagreement with me. You just did not like that i think this is all very funny.
+1,000 Sabine
Seen it both personally and professionally.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/rachel-peters-labour-needs-bolder-policy-changes-to-help-those-who-need-it-most
Same or similar voices who were saying post election it was a do nothing government
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2008/S00052/dunne-speaks-will-labours-no-policy-campaign-work.htm
Like parrots these commentators can be relied on to always 'squawk'
What the hell is happening in Dunedin?
Reports of 'multiple' stabbings at Dunedin supermarket, screams heard – NZ Herald
Yeh it’s a worry, Jimmy! I was there myself this morning after the school-run (fortunately not during the attack).
Though we’re not dealing with a criminal mastermind/ terrorist here. The police didn’t even bother putting him in the car, they just walked him across the carpark to the central police station right next door.
I have been following it here:
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/crime/breaking-four-hurt-dunedin-supermarket-stabbing
edit: I see the Herald also has that bit about the bystander seeing hysterical girls, assuming they were shoplifting and detaining (presumably by grabbing) them. How is that even an appropriate response, let alone legal? Though I imagine the police had other things on their mind, so it’ll end there.
Care in the community?
It seems that random violence is showing up a bit everywhere. Stabbings today in Dunedin, the other day shootings in AKL, someone got bashed over the head in Invercargill, people killed in Wellington and Christchurch. It just seems to be way more then usual.
Maybe its just people under stress and cracking.
Homicides are running at similar levels to previous years.
Gun violence is definitely up and is connected to drug trade money and mostly gang members and associates ( some times other relatives like the grandmother in Favona)
This is seriously horrifying, yet also strangely poetic:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/10/body-of-arrested-myanmar-poet-khet-thi-returned-to-family-with-organs-missing
He may have died of a broken heart. Heart seizure is a growing non-medical problem in extremist bodies around the world. RIP Khet Thi.
Water in Canterbury. When the rivers are no longer fed by snows from the mountains what will they do these farming and business pragmatists. Let 'them' suck cactus or something.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/442223/nitrates-in-selwyn-river-up-50-percent-in-22-months-federation-of-freshwater-anglers-says
Canterbury Regional Council (ECan) is being accused of creating a monster that it can no longer control when it comes to degraded water quality in the region.
That is according to Federation of Freshwater Anglers, which has been testing the Selwyn River and has found polluting nitrates have increased by up to 50 percent in the space of just 22 months.
The federation's president and long time angler Peter Trolove had been monitoring the Selwyn with the help of a nitrate tester, bought with a grant from a pub charity.
The Selwyn, which people could no longer swim in, was once a top trout fishing destination.
"If you go back before World War Two, it was considered one of the top half dozen trout fisheries in the dominion. And they had fish counts of over 200,000 trout going up the river, and it's fallen to, well, I don't know if they find any now."
Fascinating seeing certain sections of the left show how absolutely out of touch they are by defending high paid civil servants and bureaucrats who have failed time and time again, at the border by embarrassing the govt with the fiasco earlier in the year, in our prisons, at OT , by making horrendous decisions in health. It's amazing to see certain factions of the left defend unelected useless civil servants with too much power and calling the govt anti union while govt implements strongest pro union reforms in decades.
There will be no solidarity with high paid MSD workers and their ilk and if the PSA thinks the public supports the people who blackmail poor people with their nudes and throw people off welfare it's so deliciously out of touch.
If the other unions about to receive more power who represent lower paid workers side with the PSA it'll mind blowingly self defeating and HILARIOUS.
I'm enjoying watching the wellington mafia and the green and Champagne socialists furious their mates will only get two visits to melbourne a year instead of three with an annual trip to europe (it's the bourgeoisie god given right 🤣) into some kind of attack on low paid workers from a govt that has continued raising min wage and even benefits and strengthened unions in an unprecedented economic crisis in a heavily neoliberal country.
I can't wait for MSD workers and ird workers who spend their lives ruining poor peoples lives and telling people to live within their means with signs saying "more money for msd case managers" delicious
If you thought it was bad already, just wait until the Government wants the public servants to implement policy now.
You will find the PSA is sending them that message already.
The mind boggles.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/389301/ministry-of-social-development-systematically-misusing-powers-inquiry
That started in the 1990s under the guidance of that dreadful woman, Christine Rankin. It was the start of the reign of terror known as the Benefit Fraud Squad made up of perfed police officers. They placed my 92 year old mother – who was quite frail with moderate dementia – and myself (her carer) under surveillance. They also rang a few times ostensibly to ask questions, but really checking whether I was there. I also witnessed them make a note of my car particulars parked in the driveway, so presumably they were planning to follow me in my car as well. After a very sharply worded letter to the local WINZ boss, the activity stopped.
Since then, I have had much empathy for beneficiaries suffering a similar fate who may not have the ability to be able to do what I did and get it stopped.
Yeah. We have money to waste in this country. But we can't increase benefits in any meaningful way.
are we allowed to find this funny?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300303904/government-in-damage-control-over-public-sector-pay-freeze-ahead-of-meeting-with-union
your wages aren't being frozen for three years, they are just on "hold".
oh that is funny.
Is this woman twisting the story more than a little? Especially at the end where she blames a man for believing a young woman who has lied about her age. It's All His Fault the rotter. She doesn't like males herself, but men who still like females are wrong is the message given.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/09/teenage-girls-unwanted-adult-male-attention
That Greenburg/ Gaetz victim was known to them initially through an online tag that mentioned her birthyear wasn't she, Grey? Anyway – they are the adults, she was the child; so they were the ones who had the duty to be certain about her age, even if that killed the mood.
That said, one advantage of the pandemic has been that there have been fewer Yankee ephebophiles over in Aotearoa this past year. I don't pretend to understand why anyone would want to have sexual relations with a teenager – even another teenager! The allure of the forbidden? Something to do while over visiting their money in the NZ$ /Cook Islands tax haven? But there is apparently a fair bit of grey area between formal prostitution (restricted 18+) and sugar-daddies in our laws (blanket 16 year old consent age), or maybe just their enforcement?
Anyway; the Guardian article is mainly about maassassin's TikTok clips of being approached by a strange man for the first time. That; "nice to meet you too", automatically parroted while her body language was pleading; "please don't kill me", was quite saddening. But then many men don't realize quite how intimidating they can appear to strangers, and it's impossible to know what the rudely intrusive (at the very least) individual's own body language was like in that interaction. It is in the Opinion section, so I can't be too upset that Donegan is giving her own opinion in response to the footage.