Open mike 10/07/2024

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, July 10th, 2024 - 38 comments
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Open mike is your post.

For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Step up to the mike …

38 comments on “Open mike 10/07/2024 ”

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  1. Ad 1
    10 July 2024 at 7:49 am

    C'mon Green Party members, email your MP and tell them it's time to get Darleen Tana out of Parliament.

    https://www.freedarleen.nz/

    We have stuff to be doing that's more important than one MP.

    • PsyclingLeft.Always 1.1
      10 July 2024 at 8:08 am

      wtf. Are you aware thats an NZ first connected link ?? L Prent had something about similar yesterday..

      https://thestandard.org.nz/quality-of-candidates-start-with-are-they-human/#comment-2004079

      • Ad 1.1.1
        10 July 2024 at 8:38 am

        Yes it's an NZFirst initiative. Nature abhors a vacuum.

        Longer Greens leave expulsion from Parliament, the bigger this story grows.

        • PsyclingLeft.Always 1.1.1.1
          10 July 2024 at 8:44 am

          Well… whatever your motives, I dont think linking to NZ first has any merit.

          • Ad 1.1.1.1.1
            10 July 2024 at 10:40 am

            Hipkins is now piling in saying Tana should not be an independent.

            Greens must move to expel from Parliament, or this will contaminate them.

            • weka 1.1.1.1.1.1
              10 July 2024 at 10:45 am

              probably has to go through the party processes, because it's a significant policy change. Probably should also wait until Tana says what she intends to do.

              Peters hates the Greens and wants them gone from parliament. The petition is funny, but also he has an agenda.

              Pressure from Labour is good, might make her come to her senses and resign if she realises how many people don't want her there.

              • Belladonna …
                10 July 2024 at 11:38 am

                Pressure from Labour is good, might make her come to her senses and resign if she realises how many people don't want her there.

                If she's unmoved by the very clearly expressed desire from her own party, for her to resign – then I think she'll be entirely unmoved by anything from other political parties.

                At this stage, she clearly doesn't care what anyone thinks of her. Certainly her public statements are redolent of a victim mentality – everyone else is wrong or misguided, the process was biased/flawed, and it's all unfair….

                https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/521619/darleen-tana-resignation-workers-say-they-just-want-their-wages

                I suspect that the MP salary is a greater motivation to stay. She’s certainly sunk the possibility of other employment – who would trust her?

                • weka …
                  10 July 2024 at 12:25 pm

                  I would have thought future employment realities would have been a motivator to be open and transparent, but we don't really know what happened on the business side, so who knows. Agree about lure of the salary.

                  • weka …
                    10 July 2024 at 12:26 pm

                    there could be legal reasons for not being open and transparent.

                    • Belladonna …
                      10 July 2024 at 1:23 pm

                      TBH – I think the opportunity to be open and transparent has long gone. Tana has clearly (from the summary report referenced in the below story) – reinvented history on multiple occasions, in order to support her current narrative.

                      https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/former-green-mp-darleen-tana-likely-knew-about-allegations-of-worker-exploitation-investigation/FSK4YJDTI5CVZCNSHSEZRBHMT4/

                      There's no benefit, in her mind, to her in coming clean now. And, there may (as you point out) be legal disadvantages: she may believe that if the issues aren't clear, she's less likely to be convicted – if this goes to court. Deny, deny, deny – is a standard rule for criminal defense.

                      Thomas Coughlin on the salary realities motivating disgraced MPs to remain in parliament.

                      https://archive.ph/SMH6j

                      It really casts Ghahraman in a better light. At least she admitted her offending (both to the Party and to the courts), and quickly resigned from Parliament. Limiting the damage to her party, as much as possible. Although her crime, is much the lesser one (against property, rather than against people) – both in GP membership eyes and mine (if that's relevant).

                    • weka []
                      10 July 2024 at 2:10 pm

                      the RNZ version

                      https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/521721/tana-likely-knew-about-allegations-of-worker-exploitation-investigation

                      That is very damning. I can’t understand why she thought none of this would come out if she became an MP. Has she not been following politics for the past decade?

                      Agree about Ghahraman. This piece on Sunday was very good, and she has gone up up in my estimation. I thought she was a bit of a loose unit as an MP despite the good work she was doing. The mental health stuff makes some sense of that, but also just being out of an insanely stressful job. All credit to her for how she has handled things since she was caught.

                      https://www.thepost.co.nz/culture/350332846/golriz-ghahraman-i-feel-more-myself-i-have-so-long

                    • Bearded Git []
                      10 July 2024 at 2:20 pm

                      It's always the cover up that is worst.

                      The only option is to Waka jump her.

                      Bryce Edwards gets up my nose, yet again, today by attacking the Greens handling of the Tana case in the NZ Herald. I don’t see how they could have handled it better.

                      Of course the Herald is well aware Edwards never loses an opportunity to slag off the Left.

                    • weka []
                      10 July 2024 at 2:44 pm

                      I’m more annoyed by the fact that he’s now paywalling half the Democracy Project’s content (wtf?).

                      He def has an anti-green/left spin. But I’m not sure he is wrong in the core of it. It is the GP process that has failed here (candidate selection, then trusting Dana over what she said this earlier this year), and Swarbrick has said they are reviewing the selection process now.

                      But for anyone that understands the Greens (which many don’t and I’m not sure BE does), the integrity has been in using a trust process based in relationship. That’s core kaupapa. We have no way of knowing in what ways that failed here, other than that Tana appears to have withheld information and then lied. But I would expect political parties to also do background checks on candidates and I still can’t understand why no-one knew about the worker issues given how small a place NZ is.

                      The issues with the waka jumping law are more complex. Everyone (including me) has their reckons, but it’s not that straightforward.

                      The rest of his piece is ruined by weird reckons. The GP leaders hoped the issue would soon go away. Really? Did they tell him that? It was reported? He mindreads? This is very low level wroiting from him.

                    • gsays []
                      10 July 2024 at 3:22 pm

                      "The pity with debate about waka jumping is that it has mainly involved MPs who appear to have personally fallen foul of their parties for flawed actions and not by MPs taking a principled stand against their leaders."

                      That is Thomas Coughlan in the link that Belladonna provided and it's the crux of The Greens position. Clearly the balance is with exploited migrant workers, the wishes of Green leaders, Tana's constituents and the taxpayers. Not with a self entitled, slippery, untrustworthy former MP, and feelings of nostalgia for former leaders of the party (Donald and MacDonald).

                      https://archive.ph/SMH6j

                    • gsays []
                      11 July 2024 at 12:11 pm

                      Oops, Donald and Fitzsimmons.

                      Sorry about that.

  2. Descendant Of Smith 2
    10 July 2024 at 8:37 am

    If this was benefit fraud they would be in jail. But typical of the numerous examples of ripping off workers and IRD…

    A recruitment company whose owner was celebrated as an emerging leader by South Canterbury’s business community is in liquidation owing more than $1.5 million to Inland Revenue.

    On the same day that Trinity Employment Services was put into liquidation, Knox registered another company, Elite Employment Services.

    The new company is listed as an employment placement service, and its website uses a similar stag antler logo to that used by Trinity.

    And it isn't like it even produces anything of value. Just one of a myriad of people getting rich clipping tickets. The sooner they make businesses pay employee deductions and PAYE payments to IRD the same day they are deducted from their pay the better off we will all be.

    My wife had to go through a business not paying her student loan payments to IRD – took months to sort out and only was because she kept her payslips showing the deductions. Nothing happened to the employer.

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/350336385/former-south-canterbury-emerging-leaders-company-liquidation

    • gsays 2.1
      10 July 2024 at 5:46 pm

      There is a sick irony linking this story with the Tana Saga.

      How the powerful can exploit and have their greedy ways, in broad daylight and their victims suffer, while institutions look on.

      • Descendant Of Smith 2.1.1
        10 July 2024 at 11:21 pm

        Yeah business owners talk all the time about how they carry the risk of running a business but seems to be quite risk free in many, many cases.

  3. Joe90 3
    10 July 2024 at 8:57 am

    Tsar Poots is going to kill the entire family.

    A court in Moscow has issued an arrest warrant for the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on charges of extremism, according to state media.

    The charges brought against Yulia Navalnaya, who lives outside Russia, in absentia are to do with her alleged "participation in an extremist society", Tass news agency said.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg3mjzyp40go?

    • Hunter Thompson II 3.1
      10 July 2024 at 9:46 am

      Doubtless an operative from the Russian thought police has been sent to eliminate her, as she might one day be a threat.

      Putin is a latter day Stalin.

    • Obtrectator 3.2
      10 July 2024 at 10:43 am

      Russia has never really known civilisation in its fullest sense. As the world seems to be evolving now, it most likely never will. (Discuss.)

      • aj 3.2.1
        10 July 2024 at 11:46 am

        Reminds me of Oscar Wilde.

        America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilisation in between.

        • Subliminal 3.2.1.1
          10 July 2024 at 12:03 pm

          Some would argue that the decadence is only a thin veneer over a continuously increasing depth in barbarism. How else to explain the unconditional support, financial and military, for the ongoing and increasingly sadistic genocide in Gaza? And given this genocide and the US administration's refusal to acknowledge or end it, how is it possible to uncritically accept their spin on any current world event.

          Palestinian lives just twist in the wind while the MIC makes record profits.

          • aj 3.2.1.1.1
            10 July 2024 at 3:52 pm

            If he were alive today he would amend that comment to reflect your concerns.

  4. joe90 4
    10 July 2024 at 2:03 pm

    Geniuses have put us $484m in the hole with more to come.

    /

    Kiwirail estimated in December that $400m had been spent on iRex but, since then, the bill has climbed to $484m.

    […]

    The rest of the money went towards other aspects of the wind down, but the cost of breaking the contract with the South Korean shipyard wasn't included.

    https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/07/09/taxpayer-bill-for-abandoned-mega-ferries-project-climbs-to-484m/

    • alwyn 4.1
      10 July 2024 at 2:33 pm

      Nearly all of the money went to spending on the terminals.

      If they went ahead and bought the ferries they had chosen we would be up for a minimum extra spend of about $2.5 billion. That is of course if the price came in at the current estimate and doesn't go up by another billion or two as most of the last Government's projects seemed to.

      Even Robertson didn't seem to have been interested in going through with the Railways mad schemes. One of his few good decisions, although he should have gone ahead and canned the project himself.

      • James Simpson 4.1.1
        10 July 2024 at 3:09 pm

        I have little doubt he would have canned it. He was asking for alternative plans from Kiwirail in July last year when they asked for more funds. He also would have received the same Treasury advice as Willis did.

        He was looking for something more affordable.

        • gsays 4.1.1.1
          10 July 2024 at 4:36 pm

          Heaven forbid Willis and Robertson, these neo liberal darlings, were to have any influence on infrastructure in the '70s.

          No Marsden Point, no electrification of the rail, no hydro dams. All a bit hard, all a bit expensive…

          • joe90 4.1.1.1.1
            10 July 2024 at 7:08 pm

            All a bit hard, all a bit expensive…

            Malcolm Gladwell on the principle of the hiding hand.

            In the mid-nineteenth century, work began on a crucial section of the railway line connecting Boston to the Hudson River.

            The addition would run from Greenfield, Massachusetts, to Troy, New York, and it required tunnelling through Hoosac Mountain, a massive impediment, nearly five miles thick, that blocked passage between the Deerfield Valley and a tributary of the Hudson.

            […]

            Everyone was wrong. Digging through the Hoosac turned out to be a nightmare. The project cost more than ten times the budgeted estimate. If the people involved had known the true nature of the challenges they faced, they would never have funded the Troy-Greenfield railroad. But, had they not, the factories of northwestern Massachusetts wouldn’t have been able to ship their goods so easily to the expanding West, the cost of freight would have remained stubbornly high, and the state of Massachusetts would have been immeasurably poorer. So is ignorance an impediment to progress or a precondition for it?

            The economist Albert O. Hirschman, who died last December, loved paradoxes like this. He was a “planner,” the kind of economist who conceives of grand infrastructure projects and bold schemes. But his eye was drawn to the many ways in which plans did not turn out the way they were supposed to—to unintended consequences and perverse outcomes and the puzzling fact that the shortest line between two points is often a dead end.

            https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/06/24/the-gift-of-doubt

            https://archive.li/eGMgc

        • aj 4.1.1.2
          10 July 2024 at 6:51 pm

          He was only asking kiwirail to come up with less costly terminal options. Exactly what Willis should have done, rather than canning everything

          • alwyn 4.1.1.2.1
            10 July 2024 at 8:44 pm

            I fear you are far to innocent, just as Robertson was. I can only surmise what I think happened but for what it is worth here is my view.

            Robertson was sold a scheme that for a very low price they could two wonderful new ships that would allow for rail wagons and oodles of passengers. It would only cost $X but there would need to be a little more money, as yet undetermined to carry out minor work on the terminals.

            Our Finance Minister took the hook and the boats were ordered. A bit later they went back and told him that the "little bit extra" was now estimated to be another $1 billion, then $2 billion and then about $2.5 billion. Sold a pup by the oldest trick in the book and he didn't want to back out because he would look stupid.

            If he really did ask for a lower figure I suppose he was told that the rail option would have to be scrapped.

            I wonder what the final amount would have been?

            • aj 4.1.1.2.1.1
              10 July 2024 at 9:10 pm

              There is s lot to play out here yet, and none of it is going to improve Willis's credibility rating I suspect.

              As for project costs, Auckland Airport's upgrade will total similar sums as IREX. It puts the cost two modern rail capable ferries and full port upgrades at each end into perspective.

              The new domestic jet terminal is expected to cost $2.2 billion overall, with a further $1.7 billion to cover the cost of integrating domestic and international travel – a spend that is in line with other comparable airport upgrades around the world.

              “We’ve been careful to benchmark the terminal design against other airports. Like us, airports around the world are underway upgrading infrastructure that was built to manage aircraft flying in the 1960s and 70s.

              https://corporate.aucklandairport.co.nz/news/latest-media/news-articles/a-new-welcome-inside-auckland-airports-upgrade-of-domestic-jet-travel

          • Graeme 4.1.1.2.2
            10 July 2024 at 8:54 pm

            A good piece on Interest about that. https://www.interest.co.nz/public-policy/128602/brendon-harre-makes-case-taking-minimum-viable-design-approach-could-have

            Evidently relocating Bluebridge to the same area as Interislander was part of the proposal that got nixed. Would have released land close to city for development.

            There's a bit more to this if Brendon Harre is on the money, which he usually is.

      • joe90 4.1.2
        10 July 2024 at 7:18 pm

        Because a pork barrel project that benefits Pakuranga and Botany incumbents another Auckland motorway trumps a resilient Cook Strait connection.

        /

        https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/510930/eye-watering-amount-of-money-for-south-auckland-roading-project-cyclists-say

        • alwyn 4.1.2.1
          10 July 2024 at 8:52 pm

          Is that all the roads are going to cost? We have a cycle way under construction in Wellington that runs the 4.5 km or so from Ngauranga to Petone. The last figure I saw for that is $311 million but that was a year ago and had risen from $1990 million two years before that. If it comes in at less than $500 million I will be amazed.

          I have never seen even 10 cyclists using the road (or the existing cycle way), on any occasion I have driven the route.

          • Cinder 4.1.2.1.1
            11 July 2024 at 12:20 pm

            Oh! You've never seen any cyclists on the old cycleway?

            Well my challenge to you would be to attempt cycling it. I have, and I wouldn't wish the experience on anyone apart from ACT voters and moronic petrol heads.

            Let me know how you get on with negotiating the on and off ramp exchanges and the slipstream of enormous trucks and Ford Ragers, Rapers Rangers and then maybe we can take your views seriously.

  5. William 5
    10 July 2024 at 11:59 pm

    I suspect you already know this but Te Ara Tupua between Petone & Ngauranga is primarily a seawall to improve the resilience of the rail lines & road along that section of SH2. In 2013 there was a severe southerly storm that washed away parts of the rail lines. From NZTA

    "The coastline between Ngā Ūranga and Pito-One is a crucial infrastructure corridor with the road and rail, and critical cables and pipelines beneath the surface. Parts of this system have been damaged by severe weather in the past, like in 2013 when the rail line was washed out causing days of travel disruption/

    Te Ara Tupua’s new resilient coastal edge (seawalls and embankments) will help protect the road and rail corridor from the damaging effects of storms."

    Once it had been decided it build that it was a no brainer to provide a path along the top for walking & cycling. However that meant an overbridge was needed at Ngauranga to get back to the land side of the rail line, which is a significant cost.

    Also from that link

    "In the event of a disaster that blocks the road or rail lines, the path will be able to act as a recovery route between Wellington and Lower Hutt. It will be further out from the hills and cliffs, meaning it is less likely to be impacted by land slips that can be caused by heavy rain or by earthquakes.

    During recovery from a disaster, or if there’s an emergency on the path, vehicles (like ambulances or fire trucks) will be able to use the path."

    So what you describe as a cycle way is fundamentally an infrastructure protection scheme.

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