Can someone put some pressure on WINZ to get people who have lost their job their benefit?
I have a friend who has been made redundant and with Christmas coming up, a mortgage to pay, kids and family to look after it becomes increasingly clear that some major distress is happening. WINZ has not responded after my friend was on the phone for almost 8 hours over a period since last week. Has been promised that a case worker will call within 48 hours. Yeah right! Of cause not.
Merry Christmas looks like the worst for especially those made redundant. Talk about insult to injury. My distain for this agency is right now without bounds.
Maybe it needs to be privatised or some other plan put in place because it clearly is not working if there is such lack of response.
I would like to know whether any prospective beneficiaries have gone into depression and worst still, could not see a way out of it due to lack of financial help.
Hah! Don't hold your breath Sunshine because it would appear this Current Mob have little to no intention of any meaningful repair of our Social Safety Net.
…the truly depressing bit starts around 27 minutes.
I always harboured doubts that it was entirely Winston applying the handbrake on enacting the reforms considered urgent by the WEAG…and to hear Our Leader opening her press conference with her calendar with much emphasis on her meetings with "business"…it's abandon ye all hope time.
Jacinda Ardern and her spokesperson for Winz Carmel Sepuloni were clear about what beneficiaries could expect should they get in again. Nothing. A wet handshake, a meaningless course in CV writing, a stern lecture about the vlaue of work and other then that nothing.
Under utilisation rate for women in NZ currently sits at almost 20% (per gov. ), not a word about that, 5.9 % unemployment is average, regional it looks much much worse, unemployed who have partners with jobs will be refused any help cause……partner, and so on and so forth.
Winz has been understaffed before Covid, and now its severely understaffed, but nothing is done. Reform to Winz will only come with a government that actually wants to reform, and the Labour is not the party that will reform anything.
My heart sank when sepuloni was again given that portfolio …(as it did when she first got it..)….and arderns' promise yesterday to do s.f.a. about what she said previously/time and time again ..was a top priority priority for her…poverty.. just has that heart sinking more and more…my son just noted that he thinks ardern will do/is doing an obama…acclaimed internationally…and doing s.f.a. domestically to earn any acclaim…she/labour are neoliberal incrementalists..’moderates’.she/they haven't changed those stripes/spots at all…and any optimism I may have had since the election re ardern/labour actually doing something meaningful..is well and truly down the crapper..and of course another question to ask is: is marama able to comment on this promise from ardern to do nothing with any sense of urgency about poverty..?..or is she muzzled by the deal the greens have with labour….?..and any labour loyalists here willing to defend arderns' promise to do s.f.a…?…
My heart sank when she got the ACC portfolio. The government will probably stall decisions to do with the Royal Commission of Inquiry. The ACC system is inadequate when it comes to anomalies related to historical sexual assault in or out of state care.
The problem reminds me of a bumper sticker that was put onto cars in the United States late in 1965.
This was after Lyndon Johnson, who claimed he didn't want a larger war in Vietnam, had run, and won, against Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election. Johnson had labelled Barry as being someone who wanted to increase the US troops in Vietnam whereas he, Lyndon wasn't planning to do so. At the time of the 1964 election there were US advisers but no ground troops involved directly.
Anyway the sticker read, and was quite accurate in its words, something like "They said if I voted for Goldwater there would be 200,000 US troops on Vietnam by the end of 1965. Well I did and there are".
Perhaps you should prepare a sticker that says something like "They said if I voted for ACT all benefits would be frozen for the next 3 years. Well I did and they have been".
Alwyn your claim and Barry Goldwaters LBJ's of no US ground troops in Vietnam pre 1964 is untrue officially it may have been true.
The US and even NZ had part of its Malaysian deployment on the ground in Vietnam the 1950s.NZ has always worked closely with the US even when it appears our politicians deny it.
Nothing can now be substantiated, but from what I have gathered from history and Establishment lies, I suspect you are telling the truth.
But that is because I sympathise. Alwyn will know only what suits him.
The US and even NZ had part of its Malaysian deployment on the ground in Vietnam the 1950s.
AFAIK the US never participated in the Malaysian crisis. It was a UK/Commonwealth military operation with NZ troops withdrawing from Malaya in 1960, returning along side other Commonwealth forces during the 1963/66 Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation.
In 1963 New Zealand sent a civilian surgical team to Vietnam and later that a year small non-combatant force was deployed. 161 Battery was deployed to Vietnam in 1965 and in 1967 a forces medical team was sent. All forces were withdrawn in 1971.
In May 1967, a 182-strong rifle company dubbed Victor (V) was deployed from the 1st Battalion, Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment (1RNZIR) base in West Malaysia
and:
Over a five-year period, the nine New Zealand rifle companies rotating through Nui Dat engaged in a constant round of jungle patrols, ambushes, and cordon-and-search operations. Less than a week after arriving, Victor Company had its first enemy contact, leaving one Viet Cong killed, another possibly wounded and five suspects detained. [2] This inaugural, small-scale action characterised the pace and scale of infantry operations in Vietnam
But I suppose any ".govt.nz" web address can be a link to an alternative history /sarc
btw, over the years I've heard my share of the NZ civilian employees/CIA cross border incursions/atrocities/bounties/severed heads etc yarns from folk who knew someone who knew someone, and while there's likely a wee kernel of truth behind some of these, I'd rate them alongside the sewer staple of Goff/Clark spitting at returning servicemen, mostly bullshit.
Joe 90 your right about the US not being involved in Malaysia but the Domino effect of communism spreading through south east Asia was a US program of preventing the spread.NZ was a close ally of the US fighting alongside the US in Korea and sharing intelligence which has been the case through to the present day.
Two external options, see the local MP and call in a Beneficiary Advocate. An MP phoning the manager at an office is always an effective process time saver.
With the organisation, the key determinant is paperwork (check on-line what is required) and getting an in the office appointment time (sorting it all by phone – probably not enough unless paperwork can be scanned) – booking appointment times can be made by phone or on-line.
booking appointment times can be made by phone or on-line.
Although they will do everything possible to prevent you seeing a real person. They don't like that. Be prepared for being told it can all be done online (including scanning in the necessary documents), only to find their computer can't cope with the answers you've given and tells you to phone them. Then the performance involved there.
All done and dusted but still, I think they just don't want to help. Maybe they get a bonus for every person left to fend for themselves.
I am so glad that the Billions we have paid for Air NZ are going to a good cause (sarc).
Maybe they get a bonus for every person left to fend for themselves.
At one point they were, that and deliberately denying all entitlements. It was common knowledge in our circles but then they got sprung publicly, the powers that be got a bit embarrassed and the practice supposedly was stopped. But there's still a suspicion that it goes on to a degree. Certainly under National Governments it does.
Wendy Shoebridge ….driven to suicide by heartless WINZ system.
Monthly quotas were imposed at the Ministry of Social Development to prosecute beneficiaries, an inquest into the death of a woman accused of benefit fraud has heard.
"We had to get one prosecution per month. We had to get $30,000 of debt to be recovered per month,"a former MSD investigator told the inquest into the death of Wendy Shoebridge. "Four cases had to be cleared per month."
Shoebridge, a 41-year-old mother, was found dead in Lower Hutt on April 3, 2011.
The day before, she opened a letter saying she was to be referred for prosecution over an alleged $22,000 benefit fraud. After her death, that amount fell to about $5500.
It eventually found she had not committed any offence at all.
And Labour appointed as Chief Executive one of the architects of the toxic culture that existed even more so under National. Someone from an advocacy group should be made the CE to get some real change.
A labour government who has removed including non-qualified spouses in super making future spouses $130 per week worse off as they will have to go on benefit not super now to "modernise the benefit system" which basically means where there is one income (e.g. due to one partner having a disability or just any reason at all) the working partner will now have to work longer – such modern thinking, a labour government who charges the poorest 25% of their income to pay for their emergency accommodation to make it "fair" and to "help them" adjust when they get better accommodation – so helpful, a labour government who had the most public support ever to increase benefits once the WEAG report was published and chose not to and then created a two tier benefit system for predominantly white workers when COVID struck leaving the existing poor and disabled down at the bottom where apparently they belong even though it was pointed out how racist this was, how other countries were providing stimulus payments to the poorest as they spent all their money in the economy, that the most disadvantaged would find it even harder to find work now as they would be competing against the newly unemployed with job skills and that WINZ resources would no doubt be moved away from the existing clients to help the newly (mainly European) unemployed and the newly labour berefit like noisy orchardists and agriculturalists who can't get their overseas captive labour and lastly that emergency assistance payments had gone up rapidly as people were falling into more and more hardship both costing money, costing peoples time having to apply and costing staff time that could be better utilised to help people find work than process food grant after food grant after food grant..
In other words business as it has been with a few nice temporary factors like winter payments.
Real change will come if they:
1. Increase benefits as per WEAG
2. Put comprehensive rent controls in – I favour the New York type rent control where a rent board decides how much rents can go up each year – hint it isn't much.
3. Reduce the age of NZS back to 60 to level the playing field more for those with disabilities and Maori who have shorter life expectancy – just get the super back through taxation for those who both work and get NZS – the extra money will provide economic stimulus as well.
Of course none of these things will happen but lots of money will be spent on infrastructure projects, short-term work schemes and so on.
“I would like to know whether any prospective beneficiaries have gone into depression and worst still, could not see a way out of it due to lack of financial help.”
You might want to include current beneficiaries in that question.
Would he be better off to register a company and apply for a small business loan from the IRD at 0% if that is possible. I'm all for the small business support but I'm sure as repayment time approaches at least some will collapse the company rather than repay the money. Is the IRD taking a personal guarantee?
Maybe not for the IRD. but surely Winz could at least jam through a basic benefit for applicants and catch up with the detail later. Everyone else seems to be getting the high trust model. And no I don't warm to Carmel or the labour party handling of the wage paid workforce or those who need Winz.
Except they seem to divert excess resources to those on super – so the older's don't complain.
So you use this to attack those receiving superannuation…?…w t.f..!…one thing the ardern gummint mk 1. did for those on super..was nothing…but there was no complaint/lobbying from the oldies…'cos they know that poverty for sole-parent/the unemployed..and their children.. is far worse …..your imputation that ardern has been filling the coffers of the elderly to the detriment of those living in poverty..with 'excess resources'..is factually incorrect..and is bullshit-on-a-stick..
Didn't mean that to sound as an attack on superannuitants.
I was talking about the service level (not money) that superannuitants seem to get from Winz and I know some who feel deeply uncomfortable about it being so good when the rest of the service seems so bad. My point was that if Winz can do a decent service level for the supers then they could do the same for everyone else as well. Second point was "is the service level so high to stop any potential complainers" .
@ r. baron…Point taken…there is a seachange in attitude from how the unemployed etc. are treated…as to how superannuitants are looked after…it is palpable..that change…and yes..there is no reason why those in need of state support should be treated so shabbily by the govt. department tasked with caring for them..
Who said WINZ do a decent service for the elderly ? I advocated very recently for NZ Super clients ; waited for nearly an hour only to be told that a return call would be made in the next 24 hours. And when pressed for a more exact time we were told " What does it matter ? You have all the time in the world now".
ardern has been filling the coffers of the elderly to the detriment of those living in poverty..with 'excess resources'..is factually incorrect..and is bullshit-on-a-stick..
As always you've plumped for a gross generalisation, but there are clearly wealthy on super with mortgage free million dollar homes and large savings accounts. Aren't they having their considerable resources bumped up by a payment that could, and should, be used to assist the lowest income earners?
As for bullshit on a stick – Have you tried holding the other end?
Parliamentarians? I doubt that they will cut their cloth. 165k income, bonus, health and super paid for, transport etc…. yeah, it must be truly difficult.
B.t.w…those rich boomers don't have to suck from the superannuation-trough…it's not compulsory..you have to apply for it…those rich taking it are just greedy bastards…end-of-story..
Not a separate issue at all as it speaks directly to your rejection of the premise that "ardern has been filling the coffers of the elderly to the detriment of those living in poverty", when that is exactly what happens when a wealthy senior takes the pension.
Of course, I didn’t generalise and claim all seniors – Just the wealthy ones with no morality and/or civic responsibility.
And there are also elderly whose rent takes most of their super and who have had to run their savings down to qualify for any supplements, making living a bit precarious.
And, all over the country pensioner units are being sold off in the larger cities.
Ah yes, just play one group of vulnerable against the other.
What about those BILLIONS! we, the taxpayer have forked out to give a 50% state company like Air NZ board some enormous share option and bonus pay. Or all those other companies with huge profits sponging of the low pay and slim middle class? Only a government where non of those sitting ever had anything like an "essential" job can come up with a farce like that.
I've spent some time thinking how shareholders could reign in the excesses of the managerial class who are the main beneficiaries of business profits at the expense of both labour and to some extent capital providers. Both capital providers and labour lose if a business goes broke but the managerial class just banks the gains.
Shareholders can pass meeting resolutions. The best I've come up with so far is for the top 5% to 10% of earners (based on FTE wages) in a company can earn only x times the median wagein the company , or maybe x times the FTE of the bottom 50%.
If there was a pool set for the top earners then they could could fight it out amongst them selves and pay the high priced technocrat they need more than the generalist manager. It's how to set that pool – and as I say these thoughts are a work in progress.
In the meantime Airnz shareholder aka the government should be on the phone. If they did not know then they need a CEO with a little more vision and political smarts.
"they need a CEO with a little more vision and political smarts.".
I'm sorry but the last CEO they had with those skills resigned and left the airline on September 25 last year. He has picked up a new job since that time.
Still he will probably have the responsibility as the share-holding Minister in about 3 years time. You can but hope.
Alwynger you must be joking you know nothing or are Gerry Brownlee.
All Airlines have suffered catastrophic losses to blame the CEO who was the former CEO of Walmart a business bigger than the whole of New Zealands economy .
He has been given a hospital pass.
He turned Walmarts fortunes around was on a massive income before he took on the role of CEO of Air NZ for pocket change .
He changed the way Walmart treated staff making sure staff were remunerated well as opposed to the minimum wage ideology of the founder and previous CEO's .
Now a vaccine is looking more hopeful we need his nouse and connections to rebuild Air New Zealand.
Why are you addressing your comment to me instead of to the Red Baron?
He (or she) is the one who was complaining about the nous of the current CEO of Air New Zealand.
Still I should not be surprised. You were the one who, the other day, seemed to think that I approved of Trump. Clearly your comprehension of things verges on the side of incoherence. You also seem to be quite incapable of even spelling my name. I guess your end of year school report should simply say "Must try harder"
Alwynger i take poetic license to take you to task over your continual whinging and untruths about any Left wing initiatives.
Your right up their with Gosman with your cynicism.
If you put facts up like how Mike Sabin resigned and NZfirst reduced The National majority even further would be good.
I did have dyslexia growing up not unlike Winston Churchill who struggled with school till he turned 19 then it suddenly disappeared where he went on to be one of the most influential people in history and is responsible for you not speaking Japanese or German and allowing you to have the freedom to speak at all.I was at the bottom of most of my classes during high school but not long before I turned 16 a light switched on and suddenly I went to the top of the class in most subjects except English comprehension.
Suddenly I could speed read whole books libraries of books .
When it comes to knowledge I am a library you are a cheap gossip magazine.
You make comments that Christopher luxton was a better CEO .At a time when international tourism grew exponentially ,its easy to look good when business expands without having to do much.
Your ACT party would have let AirNZ go to the wall no govt help.
What it is: Low-interest one-off loan of up to $10,000 + $1,800 for each full-time equivalent employee.
3% interest rate
repay over 5 years
no payments in first 2 years — but you can choose to make payments
payments handled by Inland Revenue.
No interest charged if you pay back the loan within a year.
Who can get it:
Smaller businesses struggling financially due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including:
businesses with up 50 employees
sole traders
self-employed people.
As with any loan, you must also be able to show you can pay it back. Your business needs to be viable, with a plan to stay that way.
so again, its not just done by registering a company, you actually have to prove you have a viable business in order to get the business contingency loan, or alternatively you have to be on a WINZ benefit to apply for hte Self Employment Start Up.
If there is a 0% interest business loan other then that that is available through IRD please link as that would be interesting news.
What has he looking for a job got to do with a Failure of Winz to do the job they are paid to do? Namely answering the phones in a timely manner, scheduling person/person meetings to get paperwork sorted and benefits given should all legal requirements be met?
Janet, are you joking? Of cause my friend did (he or she). But that short time before Christmas coupled with a person being in their 50's seem to be the combination that really gets you into some serious trouble.
Euthanasia anybody?
But maybe you know how to get a handout like Air NZ or Briscoes. Very grateful for any hint.
My friend is looking for a job rest assured. Do you honestly believe you can feed a family on a benefit? Not to mention that this friend has worked all their life and find themselves for the first time in such situation. Do you actually understand what such event does to you psychologically? The anguish not to be able get bills paid, the sleepless nights, the worry. No wonder people kill themselves in droves here.
I don't have words for you comments really – you really don't know what the back ground is and put a judgement onto this person. Are you working for WINZ?
No I am not judging. I support the UBI theory where we do not have to be in your friends position, hanging on the whims of WINZ. We have a funny situation here in NZ at the moment. In front of me I have the latest Farmers Weekly … screaming out for workers in horticulture, diarying you name it. Screaming at the government for not bringing migrant workers in . Migrant workers who up and leave their wives and families for 6 months or more to pick up a dollar in NZ. They go home "rich " men in the societies they come from, but their being here has in the meantime held down wages, making it unattractive for ours to now go out and pick up these jobs.
Somehow we have to get this situation rebalanced , without migrant workers. In the end it will mean our food costs more…
This is true but equally one cannot expect someone to uproot the family, maybe renting the house (mortgaged) out and paying rent at the other end, new schools for the kids and all that for a few months. As a report recently showed, it is for the majority work at minimum rate. My friend has arthritis which really makes picking in the orchards etc not a viable option. I also think we need to be careful to abstain from asking every unemployed person to take up picking "for the good of the nation", it borders on forced labour.
BTW, I am very much for the UBI which would as a very desirable side effect by removing a large swat of bureaucrats who believe they can play god with peoples lives.
I agree with the advice about local MP and a beneficiary advocate.
Privatising WINZ would make it worse. There's not good reason why WINZ can't function well other than the ideologies of successive governments (Nat and Lab) that have fucked the system up so much. At the moment it's under staffing.
They will have billion of them by the end of the year.
We should have half of our share (M) 500,000 by mid-year. Plenty for the health workers/aged care workers, border workers, front of public workers and workers with pre existing conditions.
We also have stakes in other vaccines in development – such as the Oxford one. Hopefully another 1.5M of these as well.
That would be around 4M by the end of next year – about how many would take a vaccine.
All going well, If there is a global rollout of an effective vaccine by the middle of next year it will have been a remarkable achievement by the scientific and engineering community involved in its research and development and product.
At some level I must confess a small enjoyment about having the country to ourselves seeing home grown talent etc. ( but not at the price of a pandemic of course) .
But I'm not sure that I want to see everything just returning to the "old normal" without whittling out industries and settings that do not work for all of us.
But I'm not sure that I want to see everything just returning to the "old normal" without whittling out industries and settings that do not work for all of us.
Agreed – it would be nice for a bit of a reset in certain areas, hopefully there'll be further gains regarding flexibility with how and where people work and lessons learned about our country's vulnerabilities to circumstances out of our control.
I suspect I may be disappointed and we'll see the return of the previous normal.
You know, the labour 'market' is entirely too free already. Free to break our immigration laws in a systematic fashion. Free to enjoy the blind eye of corrupt officials and ministers unfit to exercise their warrants.
If government want NZ to work, they have to work themselves. We have those immigration rules for a very sound and well-established reason, and if, as seems to be the case, the government is so out of touch they don't understand that, all they need to do is see that the law is obeyed. Their job, in case any of them wants to pretend otherwise.
Do your job Mr Faafoi, or resign in favour of someone who will.
It's going to take at least 3 to 5yrs before Airlines get reestablished let alone the tourists trust in travel ,have enough money to travel.Airlines won't be doing discounting until the volume builds up.
Forget the pollsters. If you wanted to know the outcome of last week’s US election, you just had to ask Gabriel Byrne. I did, a month ago. I wish I had gone to the bookies.
Byrne was in London on the way back to his farm in Maine, where he lives with his wife and three-year-old daughter. It’ll be thin, he said, Biden’s margin is miles slimmer than anyone predicts. He called it in 2016, too.
“If you were in touch with the rage that was on the ground, you were not looking at Hillary Clinton and saying, she’s going to get elected. That rage is still on the ground. The 40 million who support Trump haven’t wavered one iota.”
When he emails on Thursday night, he blames the Democrats for the tight result. “This is the second time they’ve come up against a Gameshow Host and they’ve learned nothing. Again they seriously underestimated the level of anger among mostly blue-collar workers.”
I don’t need to ask if he feels any optimism; he has already been pretty clear. “At least it’s the end of that guy but, personally, I can’t stand Biden. An exceptionalist roaring about America as the moral leader of the world, all this crap. You can’t appeal to people in Maine or Wisconsin or Michigan by saying this is a battle for the soul of America. It’s just political garbage.
“Nothing much will change under Biden because his thing is: let’s return America to what it was. Well, what America was caused Trump. The Democrats rolled out the red carpet (for him).”
Principled, independent thought … concern not so much for the bloated self-absorption of Upper-Middle Clintonistas & Intersectionals … more for the interests of Blue Collar America (even those really yukky ones who have white skin & are male … Ewwww Yuck !!!) … well, it's Crazyville, isn't it ? You mark my words, those God-forsaken Ruskies are behind this !!! … Damn you, Putin, damn you to hell !!!
more for the interests of Blue Collar America (even those really yukky ones who have white skin & are male
And the black Americans who live in crime ridden cities who know that BLM's calls to abolish the police are nothing but disaster for them. Or the Latinos who migrated to the USA knowing that far from a racist hell hole, that it was their best opportunity to make a better life for themselves, look at arsonists burning down businesses … and their empathy lies firmly with owners of them.
“Nothing much will change under Biden because his thing is: let’s return America to what it was. Well, what America was caused Trump. The Democrats rolled out the red carpet (for him).”
She has shown that an ordinary person can achieve political success in the USA while at the same time eschewing donations from the wealthy and corporates.
@ad…so what did that 'actor' say that is factually incorrect…?…b.t.w…did you call 2016 for clinton .?..you are a man riddled with yr certainties ..so I doubt you sat on the fence…
Well, it's his perspective, but there's nothing particularly crazy in what he says. There's the usual conceit that he knows "blue collar workers" better than other wealthy people do, but there doesn't seem to be much of the thinly-veiled references to "soros" and all that veiled-nazi jazz.
Didn't you hear the election is over and Trump lost, republicans lost, moonbats lost and wingnuts lost. You don't go messing around with the opinion filters on the back of that sort of outcome!
An attempt to unseat the chairman of the West Coast Conservation Board has fallen flat.
"Keith Morfett was recently reappointed to the board for a second term by then-Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage.
But Ngai Tahu is challenging the minister's appointment process in the High Court after accusing the conservation board of ignoring its Treaty obligations and being in thrall to environmental groups such as Forest and Bird."
It's inevitable that conflicts will arise between government environmental ideas and Maori. Please just stick to facts and avoid taking sides against Maori, 'pour encourager les autres'.
Matt King (ex MP for Northland) was given the opportunity for a pity-party on TVNZ1 Breakfast show this morning. No questions about his Twitter attacks with misinformation on climate change, no questions about name calling the PM and about the Labour Party creating a Nazi society, no questions about his actively flouting and encouraging others to flout Covid Rules but they did politely sympathize with his loss and branding him a nice guy. Not so convinced were the viewers apparently, feedback suggesting he should take a little responsibility instead of his sense of entitlement and blaming everyone but himself and his Party. Happy Days
Happy days indeed. Locals had road checks earlier in the year worried that covid-19 would come into the region. A bit of a fuss ensued but most locals were not phased about the politics. Being alive and well and having someone seeking to protect them was welcomed.
Of course there was a constituency to appeal to, to rouse and harness in election year. It is the Far North. We have red necks. King got in the car with family just to 'go for a drive to show then around'. Into the road checks no less. Fancy that, an opportunity, a cunning stunt.
A lot of them voted for him of course, most didn't.
A focus about the tide turning in mainly rural South Island has meant scant attention to the reality at the other end of the country.
In the two northernmost general electorates so solidly National for generations, that party was comprehensively thrashed. King should have stayed home, saved his petrol.
Matt was invited by Hone Harawira, to attend a Te Tai Tokerau Border Patrol for a day near Kaikohe, with Police presence! and he never turned up. He had been trying to rile his pākehā supporters about “the mareeees and their illegal road blocks”, but actually a number of non Māori in the North supported the Iwi Border Patrols.
Mr King tried to be the Trump of the North on Facebook, but regularly got fact checked and shamed, he never turned up to any invitations to debate any of the bs he put out there. A mate of mine saw him at the Dargaville A&P two years back, and King stuck his hand out, “not shaking your hand you effing fascist” was the response, King was shocked. Dunno where my mate got that classic line from but it sat the ex MP down for a minute.
King probably attended on the basis that it would be a pity-party.
TVNZ/RNZ may as well be corporate media as King's fair game and it would've been great TV watching him dance on the head of a pin if some actual journalism was practiced.
Hosking had a rant about the govts debt around covid response saying 42 organizations wanting up to $150 a week increases on benefits was causing eye watering increases in debt,and that NZ was the only country in the OECD that had increased the benefit rates by a lousy $25 other than Hong Kong .
Then Robertson comes on his show and quietly undoes all his BS.GrantRobertson also gives Hosking an update on how the economy has bounced back a lot quicker than expected.
Good on Robertson for his stellar work on the economy and his cool calm collected communication style .
[Second time: please stick to one e-mail address, thanks]
Health workers in New Zealand quarantine hotels are some of the worst protected in the developed world, according to a man in managed isolation who's helped kit out medical staff all over the world.
The organisation has financial difificulties partly from the pandemic impacting fund-raising. Peters was right to call for better government contribution.
Looks like Collins has already traded places with her deputy within minutes of his appointment. Void of original thought, of course, but ironically, may well be a good move.
“Dr Reti’s knowledge and history working in the health sector will be an asset as Parliament deals with the impact of Covid-19. His experience will be invaluable to me as deputy leader and I’m looking forward to working closer with him.”
After all, following the 2014 election National had 60 seats and Labour had 32.
Labour recovered enough to form the Government after the following election.
Now Labour have 65 and National have 33 which is pretty much the same thing. Who knows but history may repeat and we will have a change of Government in 2023. After all we aren't likely to have another pandemic are we?
We have created "a perfect storm" for diseases from wildlife to spill over into humans and spread quickly around the world, scientists warn.
Human encroachment on the natural world speeds up that process.
In the last 20 years, we've had six significant threats – SARS, MERS, Ebola, avian influenza and swine flu," Prof Matthew Baylis from the University of Liverpool told BBC News. "We dodged five bullets but the sixth got us.
"And this is not the last pandemic we are going to face, so we need to be looking more closely at wildlife disease."
As part of this close examination, he and his colleagues have designed a predictive pattern-recognition system that can probe a vast database of every known wildlife disease.
Across the thousands of bacteria, parasites and viruses known to science, this system identifies clues buried in the number and type of species they infect. It uses those clues to highlight which ones pose most of a threat to humans.
Do you think world leaders have worked out that the next time a pandemic erupts that shutting the planet down (human activity) for 6 weeks is the cheapest option.
The appropriate response will depend on how it spreads, infectiousness profile over time, and no doubt a bunch of other factors an infectious disease specialist could bore us all to tears with.
For instance, if the next one is some sort of turbo-hepatitis where the spread is mostly through food and transferring infectious material on surfaces, and people can be infectious for decades, then the appropriate response will be quite different to a shutdown.
We are lucky here in Godzone on how we do politics. On Stuff this morning there is video of Smith conceding Nelson to Rachel Boyack and while I am not in any way a fan of his he has to be commended for the gracious manner in which he did it and the exceptional way that the Nelson Labour crew treated him. Well done everybody. It is well worth a look just to reinforce how thankful we should be about how civilised we are here.
Well we probably should give these visa holders their money back. But 23,000 visa's which is probably not the lot, is an awful lot of competition for our young NEETS in the job market – for the 50,000 or so who enter it every year. Any chance of Labour rejiging this? Unlikely.
Working Holidays are an outcome of reciprocal agreements with other countries, so we could scrap them, but that would probably result the end of the equivalent schemes, so instead of competing with foreign workers, they would compete with young NZ workers who didn't go on their OEs.
Yeh Nah I haven't looked up any actual figures – don't even know if they exist in total but our birth cohorts are in the 50-60k a year zone hence around that number onto the labour market a year.
Now if we do straight number swaps eg we issue 10 to the UK and they issue 10 to NZ it is going to have a far greater impact on our labour market as we have a much smaller population. Some of the countries mentioned in the article are aslo unlikely I suspect to provide much in the way of kiwi jobs – some of the south americain countries. But 23K is a lot and that won't be all. I really can't see that number of Kiwis leaving . and the ones that stay have to compete with student visas and other low waged immigration as well.
further nats news, maureen pugh has gone from phucking useless ,to a promotion up the list, to whip. she is getting her numbers ready for a rural takeback of the nats! with dr shane as her deputy, that would cover most of the nats trad voters, just need to keep bridges around to appeal to the whiney suitwearers.
It's less a job, more a summer internship, duties amount to nodding on camera beside a leader who will be gone soon. Still, it puts him on the (very) short list for next leader, and they could do a lot worse – and probably will.
National deputy leaders of 2020, a brief history: Bennett – quit Parliament. Kaye – quit Parliament. Brownlee – lost seat. Reti – lost seat.
I don't think any party anywhere can boast such a record.
Deeply disappointed in the cannabis referendum. The combination of punitive, vindictive sanctimonious, self righteous, fake christians and false moralists with the justice industry [cops lawyers judges corrections and would be counsellors looking for a gig] was too much for the referendumb to bear. plus the spiteful bastards against everything. The way Andrew Little brushed it off and then dodged a bullet by jettisoning justice was shameful.As a committed advocate for the working man I am never going to vote for the running dogs of capitalism but the "vote" will go to the greens next time
life will go on as normal. if Portugal is any example usage will decrease and the kidz who get upin front of the beak and say"it woz the drugz wot made me do it" will have to be responsible for their actions.
Cannabis is not the only problem with this government….and all the problems..inaction on poverty/environment/animal welfare etc etc..on and on it goes..can all be tracked back to the fact that labour is yet to realise it is clutching to a failed/bankrupt ideology…neoliberalism…as you look around the world its' failures are legion..increasing inequality..fucking up the environment…and doing basically nothing to fix the problems we have…and labour has long wed incrementalism to to that bankrupt neoliberalism…this is what has been the ideology of both our main parties since after the second lange govt and Ruth richardson's magic poverty wand was waved…helen clark/are/were neoliberal incrementalists to the core…(and they are now advising ardern..a fact that chills the blood)..and ardern/robertson learnt at the knees of clark/cullen…and what clark thought of from day one of each term and what drove her actions/inaction was the next election ..doing what she had to do to win that next election..(hence large wedges of middle-class welfare..and the poor can just rot..)…ardern/robertson are following in those shoes ..and the country cannot expect any meaningful change any time soon…(and when did it become the norm that for any pissant/small change that is made…we are made to wait eons for it to actually be enacted..?..when the f. did that delayed-gratification become the norm..?..)…as long as ardern/ labour fly that neoliberal flag..nothing much will change…but the warning for ardern is that what clark did so successfully will not work again…and she should know that when she/labour fail to deliver..that there is now another party the disappointed/disgruntled can turn to at the next election…who they know will do all the shit that needs doing…the greens…so if she doesn't deliver at the next election those tories disgusted with the current iteration/doings of the national party..will likely return home..and the left will turn en masse to the greens….and the centre will not be the certainty she now thinks it is…
I've just been saying on The Daily Blog in response to Martyn's criticism of Jacinda's neglect of the beneficiaries while spouting away about them in her slogans, if she thinks she can get away with that via her professional careerist apparatchiks and public popularity her neglect of the thinking Left will involve a serious cost.
The Maori Labour MPs, to be taken at all seriously, should have demanded the Welfare Experts Group Report to be adopted immediately. Duds.
The marijuana push-back suggests there's work to do and Labour's focus groups might have something to them. When America has gone full-on grass liberalisation it suggests timidity is the essential part of the Party. Why I voted Little for leader and have never voted for Labour.
The timidity was at the birth, though Trotter calls it realism, when the 1935 govt wouldn't put my g.great grandfather in the Legislative Council because of his outright socialism. He got nationalisation of the means of production passed at the British Labour AGM in 1908. If he'd stayed in England he would have been a Lord.
Peter Dunne writes – The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became ...
Ele Ludemann writes – New Zealanders had the OECD’s second highest tax increase last year: New Zealanders faced the second-biggest tax raises in the developed world last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says. The intergovernmental agency said the average change in personal income tax ...
We all know something’s not right with our elections. The spread of misinformation, people being targeted with soundbites and emotional triggers that ignore the facts, even the truth, and influence their votes.The use of technology to produce deep fakes. How can you tell if something is real or not? Can ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Simon Clark. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). This year you will be lied to! Simon Clark helps prebunk some misleading statements you'll hear about climate. The video includes ...
It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two speeches delivered by Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at Anzac Day ceremonies in Turkey are the only new posts on the government’s official website since the PM announced his Cabinet shake-up. In one of the speeches, Peters stated the obvious: we live in a troubled ...
1. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
…it has a restricted jurisdiction which must not be abused: it is not an inquisitionNOTE – this article was published before the High Court ruled that Karen Chhour does not have to appear before the Waitangi Tribunal Gary Judd writes – The High Court ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – One of reasons Oranga Tamariki exists is to prevent child neglect. But could the organisation itself be guilty of the same?Oranga Tamariki’s statistics show a decrease in the number and age of children in care. “There are less children ...
David Farrar writes: Graeme Edgeler wrote in 2017: In the first five years after three strikes came into effect 5248 offenders received a ‘first strike’ (that is, a “stage-1 conviction” under the three strikes sentencing regime), and 68 offenders received a ‘second strike’. In the five years prior to ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in politics. That’s refreshing and will be extremely ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the two days to 6:06am on Thursday, April 25:Politics: PM Christopher Luxon has set up a dual standard for ministerial competence by demoting two National Cabinet ministers while leaving also-struggling ...
Hi,Today I mainly want to share some of your thoughts about the recent piece I wrote about success and failure, and the forces that seemingly guide our lives. But first, a quick bit of housekeeping: I am doing a Webworm popup in Los Angeles on Saturday May 11 at 2pm. ...
It is hard to see what Melissa Lee might have done to “save” the media. National went into the election with no public media policy and appears not to have developed one subsequently. Lee claimed that she had prepared a policy paper before the election but it had been decided ...
Open access notablesIce acceleration and rotation in the Greenland Ice Sheet interior in recent decades, Løkkegaard et al., Communications Earth & Environment:In the past two decades, mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet has accelerated, partly due to the speedup of glaciers. However, uncertainty in speed derived from satellite products ...
Buzz from the Beehive A statement from Children’s Minister Karen Chhour – yet to be posted on the Government’s official website – arrived in Point of Order’s email in-tray last night. It welcomes the High Court ruling on whether the Waitangi Tribunal can demand she appear before it. It does ...
Mr Bombastic:Ironically, the media the academic experts wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to ...
It's hard times try to make a livingYou wake up every morning in the unforgivingOut there somewhere in the cityThere's people living lives without mercy or pityI feel good, yeah I'm feeling fineI feel better then I have for the longest timeI think these pills have been good for meI ...
In 1974, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Nixon, finding that the President was not a King, but was subject to the law and was required to turn over the evidence of his wrongdoing to the courts. It was a landmark decision for the rule ...
Every day now just seems to bring in more fresh meat for the grinder.In their relentlessly ideological drive to cut back on the “excessive bloat” (as they see it) of the previous Labour-led government, on the mountains of evidence accumulated in such a short period of time do not ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Megan Valére SosouMarket gardening site of the Itchèléré de Itagui agricultural cooperative in Dassa-Zoumè (Image credit: Megan Valère Sossou) For the residents of Dassa-Zoumè, a city in the West African country of Benin, choosing between drinking water and having enough ...
Buzz from the Beehive Melissa Lee – as may be discerned from the screenshot above – has not been demoted for doing something seriously wrong as Minister of ...
Morning in London Mother hugs beloved daughter outside the converted shoe factory in which she is living.Afternoon in London Travelling writer takes himself and his wrist down to A&E, just to be sure. Read more ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – The recent announcement of the University Advisory Group, chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman, makes very clear where the Government’s focus and priorities lie. The remit of the Advisory Group is that Group members will consider challenges and opportunities for improvement in the university sector including: ...
Eric Crampton writes – The Reserve Bank of New Zealand desperately wants to find reasons to have workstreams in climate change. It makes little sense. They’ve run another stress test on the banks looking to see if they could find a prudential regulation case. They couldn’t. They ...
Rob MacCullough writes – Pundits from the left and the right are arguing that National’s Fast Track Bill that is designed to speed up infrastructure decisions could end up becoming mired in a cesspool of corruption. Political commentator ...
Looking at the headlines this morning it’s hard to feel anything other than pessimistic about the future of humanity.Note that I’m not speaking about the future of mankind, but the survival of our humanity. The values that we believe in seem to be ebbing away, by the day.Perhaps every generation ...
Swabbing mixed breed baby chicks to test for avian influenzaUh oh. Bird flu – often deadly to humans – is not only being transmitted from infected birds to dairy cows, but is now travelling between dairy cows. As of last Friday, Bloomberg News reports, there were 32 American dairy herds ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
What is it with the mining industry? Its not enough for them to pillage the earth - they apparently can't even be bothered getting resource consent to do so: The proponent behind a major mine near the Clutha River had already been undertaking activity in the area without a ...
Photo # 1 I am a huge fan of Singapore’s approach to housing, as described here two years ago by copying and pasting from The ConversationWhat Singapore has that Australia does not is a public housing developer, the Housing Development Board, which puts new dwellings on public and reclaimed land, ...
Buzz from the Beehive Reactions to news of the government’s readiness to make urgent changes to “the resource management system” through a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) suggest a balanced approach is being taken. The Taxpayers’ Union says the proposed changes don’t go far enough. Greenpeace says ...
I’m starting to wonder if Anna Burns-Francis might be the best political interviewer we’ve got. That might sound unlikely to you, it came as a bit of a surprise to me.Jack Tame can be excellent, but has some pretty average days. I like Rebecca Wright on Newshub, she asks good ...
Chris Trotter writes – Willie Jackson is said to be planning a “media summit” to discuss “the state of the media and how to protect Fourth Estate Journalism”. Not only does the Editor of The Daily Blog, Martyn Bradbury, think this is a good idea, but he has also ...
Graeme Edgeler writes – This morning [April 21], the Wellington High Court is hearing a judicial review brought by Hon. Karen Chhour, the Minister for Children, against a decision of the Waitangi Tribunal. This is unusual, judicial reviews are much more likely to brought against ministers, rather than ...
Both of Parliament’s watchdogs have now ripped into the Government’s Fast-track Approvals Bill. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāMy pick of the six newsey things to know from Aotearoa’s political economy and beyond on the morning of Tuesday, April 23 are:The Lead: The Auditor General,John Ryan, has joined the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarah SpengemanPeople wait to board an electric bus in Pune, India. (Image credit: courtesy of ITDP) Public transportation riders in Pune, India, love the city’s new electric buses so much they will actually skip an older diesel bus that ...
The infrastructure industry yesterday issued a “hurry up” message to the Government, telling it to get cracking on developing a pipeline of infrastructure projects.The hiatus around the change of Government has seen some major projects cancelled and others delayed, and there is uncertainty about what will happen with the new ...
Hi,Over the weekend I revisited a podcast I really adore, Dead Eyes. It’s about a guy who got fired from Band of Brothers over two decades ago because Tom Hanks said he had “dead eyes”.If you don’t recall — 2001’s Band of Brothers was part of the emerging trend of ...
Buzz from the Beehive The 180 or so recipients of letters from the Government telling them how to submit infrastructure projects for “fast track” consideration includes some whose project applications previously have been rejected by the courts. News media were quick to feature these in their reports after RMA Reform Minister Chris ...
It would not be a desirable way to start your holiday by breaking your back, your head, or your wrist, but on our first hour in Singapore I gave it a try.We were chatting, last week, before we started a meeting of Hazel’s Enviro Trust, about the things that can ...
Calling all journalists, academics, planners, lawyers, political activists, environmentalists, and other members of the public who believe that the relationships between vested interests and politicians need to be scrutinised. We need to work together to make sure that the new Fast-Track Approvals Bill – currently being pushed through by the ...
Feel worried. Shane Jones and a couple of his Cabinet colleagues are about to be granted the power to override any and all objections to projects like dams, mines, roads etc even if: said projects will harm biodiversity, increase global warming and cause other environmental harms, and even if ...
Bryce Edwards writes- The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. ...
Michael Bassett writes – If you think there is a move afoot by the radical Maori fringe of New Zealand society to create a parallel system of government to the one that we elect at our triennial elections, you aren’t wrong. Over the last few days we have ...
Without a corresponding drop in interest rates, it’s doubtful any changes to the CCCFA will unleash a massive rush of home buyers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The six things that stood out to me in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Monday, April 22 included:The Government making a ...
Sunday was a lazy day. I started watching Jack Tame on Q&A, the interviews are usually good for something to write about. Saying the things that the politicians won’t, but are quite possibly thinking. Things that are true and need to be extracted from between the lines.As you might know ...
In our Weekly Roundup last week we covered news from Auckland Transport that the WX1 Western Express is going to get an upgrade next year with double decker electric buses. As part of the announcement, AT also said “Since we introduced the WX1 Western Express last November we have seen ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 29 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Stats NZ releases its statutory report on Census 2023 tomorrow.Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivers a pre-Budget speech at ...
A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 14, 2024 thru Sat, April 20, 2024. Story of the week Our story of the week hinges on these words from the abstract of a fresh academic ...
The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. The Government says this will ...
This is a column to say thank you. So many of have been in touch since Mum died to say so many kind and thoughtful things. You’re wonderful, all of you. You’ve asked how we’re doing, how Dad’s doing. A little more realisation each day, of the irretrievable finality of ...
Identifying the engine type in your car is crucial for various reasons, including maintenance, repairs, and performance upgrades. Knowing the specific engine model allows you to access detailed technical information, locate compatible parts, and make informed decisions about modifications. This comprehensive guide will provide you with a step-by-step approach to ...
Introduction: The allure of racing is undeniable. The thrill of speed, the roar of engines, and the exhilaration of competition all contribute to the allure of this adrenaline-driven sport. For those who yearn to experience the pinnacle of racing, becoming a race car driver is the ultimate dream. However, the ...
Introduction Automobiles have become ubiquitous in modern society, serving as a primary mode of transportation and a symbol of economic growth and personal mobility. With countless vehicles traversing roads and highways worldwide, it begs the question: how many cars are there in the world? Determining the precise number is a ...
Maintaining a safe and reliable vehicle requires regular inspections. Whether it’s a routine maintenance checkup or a safety inspection, knowing how long the process will take can help you plan your day accordingly. This article delves into the factors that influence the duration of a car inspection and provides an ...
Mazda Motor Corporation, commonly known as Mazda, is a Japanese multinational automaker headquartered in Fuchu, Aki District, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. The company was founded in 1920 as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd., and began producing vehicles in 1931. Mazda is primarily known for its production of passenger cars, but ...
Your car battery is an essential component that provides power to start your engine, operate your electrical systems, and store energy. Over time, batteries can weaken and lose their ability to hold a charge, which can lead to starting problems, power failures, and other issues. Replacing your battery before it ...
In most states, you cannot register a car without a valid driver’s license. However, there are a few exceptions to this rule. Exceptions to the RuleIf you are under 18 years old: In some states, you can register a car in your name even if you do not ...
Mazda, a Japanese automotive manufacturer with a rich history of innovation and engineering excellence, has emerged as a formidable player in the global car market. Known for its reputation of producing high-quality, fuel-efficient, and driver-oriented vehicles, Mazda has consistently garnered praise from industry experts and consumers alike. In this article, ...
Struts are an essential part of a car’s suspension system. They are responsible for supporting the weight of the car and damping the oscillations of the springs. Struts are typically made of steel or aluminum and are filled with hydraulic fluid. How Do Struts Work? Struts work by transferring the ...
Car registration is a mandatory process that all vehicle owners must complete annually. This process involves registering your car with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and paying an associated fee. The registration process ensures that your vehicle is properly licensed and insured, and helps law enforcement and other authorities ...
Zoom is a video conferencing service that allows you to share your screen, webcam, and audio with other participants. In addition to sharing your own audio, you can also share the audio from your computer with other participants. This can be useful for playing music, sharing presentations with audio, or ...
Building your own computer can be a rewarding and cost-effective way to get a high-performance machine tailored to your specific needs. However, it also requires careful planning and execution, and one of the most important factors to consider is the time it will take. The exact time it takes to ...
Sleep mode is a power-saving state that allows your computer to quickly resume operation without having to boot up from scratch. This can be useful if you need to step away from your computer for a short period of time but don’t want to shut it down completely. There are ...
Introduction Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) has revolutionized the field of translation by harnessing the power of technology to assist human translators in their work. This innovative approach combines specialized software with human expertise to improve the efficiency, accuracy, and consistency of translations. In this comprehensive article, we will delve into the ...
In today’s digital age, mobile devices have become an indispensable part of our daily lives. Among the vast array of portable computing options available, iPads and tablet computers stand out as two prominent contenders. While both offer similar functionalities, there are subtle yet significant differences between these two devices. This ...
A computer is an electronic device that can be programmed to carry out a set of instructions. The basic components of a computer are the processor, memory, storage, input devices, and output devices. The Processor The processor, also known as the central processing unit (CPU), is the brain of the ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Tara Ward talks to presenter Naomi Toilalo about the new TV show that turns food waste into a three course feast. Naomi Toilalo is standing in the warehouse at Good Neighbour Tauranga, helping unpack the two-and-a-half tonnes of rejected food that will arrive at the community support hub that day. ...
Scout is our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Scout’s human, Avril, for her support. Dog name: Scout (named after the little girl in To Kill a Mockingbird – she inherited the independent spirit ...
Megan Alatini takes us through her life in TV, including ‘terrible’ daytime TV, the class of Carol Hirschfeld and her most embarrassing TrueBliss moment. When she responded to a vague newspaper ad asking “do you have what it takes to be a popstar?” 25 years ago, Megan Alatini never guessed ...
A new exhibition in Wellington showcases the faces behind your local goods and services. Back in 1977, when I was a fine arts student at the University of Canterbury, I took a series of photographs of Christchurch shopkeepers. The photos were for a calendar – a project for my end ...
Toomaj and his resistance to tyranny through his songs have become an icon for the youth of Iran, so his sentence has hit the nation hard. Toomaj Salehi is not the first artist to pay the price for standing with the people. ...
My cousin Dylan and I spotted these big eels under the bridge that summer. We watched them lounging under the dark weed, facing into the flow of water, their mouths frozen open. Dylan and I couldn’t stop thinking about those eels. The night we went down to the creek, we ...
Newsroom, home of satire. My long-running weekly satirical series The Secret Diary has moved to Newsroom and will appear every Saturday, with Victor Billot’s wildly popular satirical Odes continuing to appear every Sunday. Diaries, Odes – while serious political columnists toil at meaningful opinions and stroke their chins to an ...
Tara Ward unravels the many nuanced layers of a cartoon about talking dogs.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. It’s not often an episode of a children’s cartoon has adults sobbing into their sleeves, but that’s exactly what happened this week when ...
Working as a doctor in developing countries to help communities achieve better health outcomes is nothing short of a life goal for Jessica Tater. The University of Otago medical student has her sights firmly set on joining the international humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) when she qualifies ...
There’s an island in the far reaches of Auckland’s territory, sitting off the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula, 30 minutes by air from the city or four hours on the slow boat. Aotea Great Barrier is off-grid, it has a population of fewer than a thousand people … and most ...
Asia Pacific Report An Australian author and advocate, Jim Aubrey, today led a national symbolic one minute’s silence to mark the “blood debt” owed to Papuan allies during the Second World War indigenous resistance against the invading Japanese forces. “A promise to most people is a promise,” Aubrey said in ...
Asia Pacific Report The Freedom Flotilla is ready to sail to Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza. All the required paperwork has been submitted to the port authority, and the cargo has been loaded and prepared for the humanitarian trip to the besieged enclave. However, organisers received word of an “administrative ...
Pacific Media Watch Palestine solidarity protesters today demonstrated at the Auckland headquarters of Television New Zealand, accusing the country’s major TV network of broadcasting “propaganda” backing Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. About 50 protesters targeted the main entrance to the TVNZ building near Sky Tower and also picketed a side ...
Opinion by Lynley Hood. Forty years on from my 1985 Fulbright Grant, my disquiet over the war in Gaza evoked some troubling questions. The answer to my first question – What is the primary purpose of the Fulbright Programme? – was on the Fulbright NZ website. It says: US Senator, ...
The ministers responsible for green-lighting major projects need to be open about potential conflicts of interest, says Transparency International. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Professor, Family and Sexual Violence, RMIT University It has been a particularly distressing start to the year. There is little that can ease the current grief of individuals, families and communities who have needlessly lost a loved one to men’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Lichen, the first described example of symbiosis.AdeJ Artventure/Shutterstock Once known only to those studying biology, the word symbiosis is now widely used. Symbiosis is the intimate ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Hemsley, Head, Childhood Dementia Research Group, Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University Olena Ivanova/Shutterstock “Childhood” and “dementia” are two words we wish we didn’t have to use together. But sadly, around 1,400 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University The government’s Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee has just published its second report. It was set up by Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth in 2022 to provide: ...
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 The Queensland state election will be held in October. A YouGov poll for The Courier Mail, conducted April 9–17 from a sample ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Naeni, PhD candidate at Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University There’s been much talk in recent months about what a possible second Donald Trump presidency in the United States could mean for Europe, Russia’s war in Ukraine, the ...
A brief round-up of submissions on the controversial proposed law. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week, submissions on the controversial Fast-track Approvals Bill closed just hours after the government released a list of stakeholder organisations who were sent letters advising how they could ...
A poem from Robin Peace’s new collection Detritus of Empire: feather / grass / rock. Cereal giving I see a woman’s hands, see her curious hands break a stalk as she walks through the tall prairie, the savannah, the steppe, wherever it was. See her idly bite the grass that ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Hemingway’s Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)A handsomely produced (debossed cover, lovely ...
The Commissioner's decision validates the longstanding efforts of the local community and ensures that Awataha Marae will be managed to serve the needs of the local community, particularly for hosting tangihanga. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Salles, Associate professor, University of Sydney Examples of Australian landscapes.Unsplash Seventy thousand years ago, the sea level was much lower than today. Australia, along with New Guinea and Tasmania, formed a connected landmass known as Sahul. Around this time – ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felicity Castagna, Lecturer, Creative Writing, Western Sydney University Day Day Market, ParramattaPhoto: Garry Trinh I live on the edge of Parramatta, Australia’s fastest-growing city, on the kind of old-fashioned suburban street that has 1950s fibros constructed in the post-war housing boom, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Ryan, Teaching Fellow in Economics, University of Waikato GettyImagesfatido/Getty Images There is an ongoing global debate over whether the high inflation seen in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic can be lowered without a recession. New Zealand is not ...
The ‘Wicked Game’ heartthrob is in his late 60s now. That didn’t stop him putting on a lively, goofy and very sparkly show. Apart from ‘Wicked Game’, which graces a sultry playlist of mine simply called 💋, my last sustained Chris Isaak listening session took place when I was about ...
Analysis - Two ministers were stripped of portfolios in a warning to Cabinet, drama broke out at the Waitangi Tribunal, and the gang patch ban bill ran into opposition. ...
Tara Ward makes an impassioned plea for some vital pop culture merch. In April 1999, I became obsessed with a new reality television show called Popstars. Every Tuesday night, five strangers transformed into music royalty before my very eyes as Joe, Keri, Carly, Erika and Megan were chosen to form ...
PNG Post-Courier In the early hours of ANZAC Day, aerial photographs captured an impressive gathering of Australians and Papua New Guineans at Isurava in the Northern (Oro) Province. The solemn dawn service yesterday was held at a site steeped in history, where some of the fiercest battles of World War ...
The PSA is shocked that Oranga Tamariki has used the cost cutting drive to downgrade its commitment to Te Ao Māori and remove many specialist Māori roles. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Kemish, Adjunct Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland There can be no more powerful symbol of the relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea than the prime ministers of these neighbouring countries walking together on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sharon Robinson, Distinguished Professor and Deputy Director of ARC Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF), University of Wollongong, University of Wollongong Andrew Netherwood Over the last 25 years, the ozone hole which forming over Antarctica each spring has started to shrink. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Viktoria Kahui, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Economics, University of Otago Getty Images/Amy Toensing Biodiversity is declining at rates unprecedented in human history. This suggests the ways we currently use to manage our natural environment are failing. One emerging concept focuses on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Colin Bednall, Associate Professor in Management, Swinburne University of Technology marvent/Shutterstock Finding the best person to fill a position can be tough, from drafting a job ad to producing a shortlist of top interview candidates. Employers typically consider information from ...
Wondering where to host your next BYO? Whether its a small gathering or a massive party, we’ve got some recommendations. I was first introduced to the concept of BYOs at Dunedin’s India Gardens, a legendary but sadly defunct establishment, which purveyed enormous quantities of mango chicken to Aotearoa’s drunkest future ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julien Cooper, Honorary Lecturer, Department of History and Archaeology, Macquarie University Julien Cooper The hyper-arid desert of Eastern Sudan, the Atbai Desert, seems like an unlikely place to find evidence of ancient cattle herders. But in this dry environment, my new ...
The sector says it’s hopeful her replacement Paul Goldsmith will be able to throw it a lifeline, after six months with a minister deemed missing in action, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign ...
The government can't just rely on axing public sector jobs and has to do more to cut spending, says the chief economist at a free market think tank. ...
Rock The Vote NZ, known for its advocacy for minor party unity and its role within the Freedoms NZ Coalition during the 2023 General Election, celebrates this merger as a strategic enhancement of its operational strength and outreach. ...
Nearly everyone has experienced the frustration of something you use breaking and being difficult or expensive to fix. Proposed legislation could change that. It’s been raining on and off all Sunday afternoon but people are lining up outside a building in a corner of Gribblehirst Park in Sandringham, Auckland. In ...
What does a forever relationship look like when you don’t believe in marriage? And how do you celebrate it? This essay is part of our Sunday Essay series, made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.I’m going to do it, right now. I’m going to say ...
It’s not that long ago Eliza McCartney was seriously wondering if the Paris Olympics would be her pole vaulting swansong. After years of being hounded by injury after injury, the Rio Olympics bronze medallist was still confident she would compete at her second Olympics in Paris in July, unless something ...
FICTION 1 Take Two by Danielle Hawkins (Allen & Unwin, $36.99) There’s commercial fiction, like this book, and then there’s quality fiction, quality writers, quality literature; the forthcoming Auckland Writers Festival is full of quality, and ReadingRoom has two tickets to give away to the following events: Paul Lynch (Dublin ...
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, Friday 26 April appeared first on Newsroom. ...
You can’t have missed the Gallipoli story as the movies, documentaries, essays and books capture what it was like for New Zealand troops in their eight-month campaign on the Peninsula. But this Anzac Day the Auckland War Memorial Museum has published a book that sheds light on a little-known aspect of the ...
The Prime Minister has committed to resuming direct flights to Thailand. But it’s not a promise he will be able to deliver on anytime soon. The post Prime Minister jumps the gun in Thailand appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra In the free-for-all between the Australian government and Big Tech boss Elon Musk this week, the government had to be on a winner. Most people would have little sympathy with Musk’s vociferous opposition to ...
Asia Pacific Report Chief Mandla Mandela, a member of the National Assembly of South Africa and Nelson Mandela’s grandson, has joined the Freedom Flotilla in istanbul as the ships prepare to sail for Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza. Mandela is also the ambassador for the Global Campaign to Return to ...
Pacific Media Watch Journalists who report on environmental issues are encountering growing difficulties in many parts of the world, reports Reporters Without Borders. According to the tally kept by RSF, 200 journalists have been subjected to threats and physical violence, including murder, in the past 10 years because they were ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards, Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in ...
Can someone put some pressure on WINZ to get people who have lost their job their benefit?
I have a friend who has been made redundant and with Christmas coming up, a mortgage to pay, kids and family to look after it becomes increasingly clear that some major distress is happening. WINZ has not responded after my friend was on the phone for almost 8 hours over a period since last week. Has been promised that a case worker will call within 48 hours. Yeah right! Of cause not.
Merry Christmas looks like the worst for especially those made redundant. Talk about insult to injury. My distain for this agency is right now without bounds.
Maybe it needs to be privatised or some other plan put in place because it clearly is not working if there is such lack of response.
I would like to know whether any prospective beneficiaries have gone into depression and worst still, could not see a way out of it due to lack of financial help.
Can someone put some pressure on WINZ …?
Hah! Don't hold your breath Sunshine because it would appear this Current Mob have little to no intention of any meaningful repair of our Social Safety Net.
Last night weka posted this…
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/11/livestream-prime-minister-jacinda-ardern-s-post-cabinet-press-conference.html
…the truly depressing bit starts around 27 minutes.
I always harboured doubts that it was entirely Winston applying the handbrake on enacting the reforms considered urgent by the WEAG…and to hear Our Leader opening her press conference with her calendar with much emphasis on her meetings with "business"…it's abandon ye all hope time.
Huge respect for these organisations…
https://medium.com/actionstation/open-letter-increase-income-support-before-christmas-7960c5100b10
…who at least gave it a go.
SSDD
I doubt anyone will take any of it onboard. Very soon we will know what carrier politicians are and not capable off.
Beneficiaries get the fob off because its soo good now, isn't it.
Jacinda Ardern and her spokesperson for Winz Carmel Sepuloni were clear about what beneficiaries could expect should they get in again. Nothing. A wet handshake, a meaningless course in CV writing, a stern lecture about the vlaue of work and other then that nothing.
Under utilisation rate for women in NZ currently sits at almost 20% (per gov. ), not a word about that, 5.9 % unemployment is average, regional it looks much much worse, unemployed who have partners with jobs will be refused any help cause……partner, and so on and so forth.
Winz has been understaffed before Covid, and now its severely understaffed, but nothing is done. Reform to Winz will only come with a government that actually wants to reform, and the Labour is not the party that will reform anything.
My heart sank when sepuloni was again given that portfolio …(as it did when she first got it..)….and arderns' promise yesterday to do s.f.a. about what she said previously/time and time again ..was a top priority priority for her…poverty.. just has that heart sinking more and more…my son just noted that he thinks ardern will do/is doing an obama…acclaimed internationally…and doing s.f.a. domestically to earn any acclaim…she/labour are neoliberal incrementalists..’moderates’.she/they haven't changed those stripes/spots at all…and any optimism I may have had since the election re ardern/labour actually doing something meaningful..is well and truly down the crapper..and of course another question to ask is: is marama able to comment on this promise from ardern to do nothing with any sense of urgency about poverty..?..or is she muzzled by the deal the greens have with labour….?..and any labour loyalists here willing to defend arderns' promise to do s.f.a…?…
My heart sank when she got the ACC portfolio. The government will probably stall decisions to do with the Royal Commission of Inquiry. The ACC system is inadequate when it comes to anomalies related to historical sexual assault in or out of state care.
The problem reminds me of a bumper sticker that was put onto cars in the United States late in 1965.
This was after Lyndon Johnson, who claimed he didn't want a larger war in Vietnam, had run, and won, against Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election. Johnson had labelled Barry as being someone who wanted to increase the US troops in Vietnam whereas he, Lyndon wasn't planning to do so. At the time of the 1964 election there were US advisers but no ground troops involved directly.
Anyway the sticker read, and was quite accurate in its words, something like "They said if I voted for Goldwater there would be 200,000 US troops on Vietnam by the end of 1965. Well I did and there are".
Perhaps you should prepare a sticker that says something like "They said if I voted for ACT all benefits would be frozen for the next 3 years. Well I did and they have been".
Now just why did you think it would be different?
Alwyn your claim and Barry Goldwaters LBJ's of no US ground troops in Vietnam pre 1964 is untrue officially it may have been true.
The US and even NZ had part of its Malaysian deployment on the ground in Vietnam the 1950s.NZ has always worked closely with the US even when it appears our politicians deny it.
A close friend of mine fought in the secret war
Thanks Tricledrown
Nothing can now be substantiated, but from what I have gathered from history and Establishment lies, I suspect you are telling the truth.
But that is because I sympathise. Alwyn will know only what suits him.
The French pulled out from 1954 onwards so how were the viet Minh kept at bay for 10 years with officially only 200 helicopters and a few advisors
The US and even NZ had part of its Malaysian deployment on the ground in Vietnam the 1950s.
AFAIK the US never participated in the Malaysian crisis. It was a UK/Commonwealth military operation with NZ troops withdrawing from Malaya in 1960, returning along side other Commonwealth forces during the 1963/66 Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation.
In 1963 New Zealand sent a civilian surgical team to Vietnam and later that a year small non-combatant force was deployed. 161 Battery was deployed to Vietnam in 1965 and in 1967 a forces medical team was sent. All forces were withdrawn in 1971.
But hey, link away to any alternative history.
/
There are now probably fake links to fake history, given 4 years of Trump, who did not start that process..
But I would beware of total trust in official records.
We all tread a wobbly tightrope.
Interesting to hear that the infantry units, forward air controllers, and special forces soldiers we sent to Vietnam were non-combatants.
From a NZ govt website:
and:
But I suppose any ".govt.nz" web address can be a link to an alternative history /sarc
161 were the first combatants deployed
btw, over the years I've heard my share of the NZ civilian employees/CIA cross border incursions/atrocities/bounties/severed heads etc yarns from folk who knew someone who knew someone, and while there's likely a wee kernel of truth behind some of these, I'd rate them alongside the sewer staple of Goff/Clark spitting at returning servicemen, mostly bullshit.
Ah ok fair call, missed the 1950s bit.
Joe 90.The first official combatants.
my friend who fought in Malaysia but was secretly deployed to Vietnam in the late 1950s along with other Kiwi Australian and British soldiers .
Joe 90 your right about the US not being involved in Malaysia but the Domino effect of communism spreading through south east Asia was a US program of preventing the spread.NZ was a close ally of the US fighting alongside the US in Korea and sharing intelligence which has been the case through to the present day.
Two external options, see the local MP and call in a Beneficiary Advocate. An MP phoning the manager at an office is always an effective process time saver.
With the organisation, the key determinant is paperwork (check on-line what is required) and getting an in the office appointment time (sorting it all by phone – probably not enough unless paperwork can be scanned) – booking appointment times can be made by phone or on-line.
All done and dusted but still, I think they just don't want to help. Maybe they get a bonus for every person left to fend for themselves.
I am so glad that the Billions we have paid for Air NZ are going to a good cause (sarc).
Maybe they get a bonus …
Wendy Shoebridge ….driven to suicide by heartless WINZ system.
Monthly quotas were imposed at the Ministry of Social Development to prosecute beneficiaries, an inquest into the death of a woman accused of benefit fraud has heard.
"We had to get one prosecution per month. We had to get $30,000 of debt to be recovered per month," a former MSD investigator told the inquest into the death of Wendy Shoebridge. "Four cases had to be cleared per month."
Shoebridge, a 41-year-old mother, was found dead in Lower Hutt on April 3, 2011.
The day before, she opened a letter saying she was to be referred for prosecution over an alleged $22,000 benefit fraud. After her death, that amount fell to about $5500.
It eventually found she had not committed any offence at all.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/87541297/compassion-for-vulnerable-from-woman-who-died-after-false-fraud-accusation
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/87347930/aggressive-prosecution-focus-at-msd-preceded-womans-death-inquest-told?rm=m
The case managers employed under 9 years of National were taught to be deliberately obstructive.
And Labour appointed as Chief Executive one of the architects of the toxic culture that existed even more so under National. Someone from an advocacy group should be made the CE to get some real change.
A labour government who has removed including non-qualified spouses in super making future spouses $130 per week worse off as they will have to go on benefit not super now to "modernise the benefit system" which basically means where there is one income (e.g. due to one partner having a disability or just any reason at all) the working partner will now have to work longer – such modern thinking, a labour government who charges the poorest 25% of their income to pay for their emergency accommodation to make it "fair" and to "help them" adjust when they get better accommodation – so helpful, a labour government who had the most public support ever to increase benefits once the WEAG report was published and chose not to and then created a two tier benefit system for predominantly white workers when COVID struck leaving the existing poor and disabled down at the bottom where apparently they belong even though it was pointed out how racist this was, how other countries were providing stimulus payments to the poorest as they spent all their money in the economy, that the most disadvantaged would find it even harder to find work now as they would be competing against the newly unemployed with job skills and that WINZ resources would no doubt be moved away from the existing clients to help the newly (mainly European) unemployed and the newly labour berefit like noisy orchardists and agriculturalists who can't get their overseas captive labour and lastly that emergency assistance payments had gone up rapidly as people were falling into more and more hardship both costing money, costing peoples time having to apply and costing staff time that could be better utilised to help people find work than process food grant after food grant after food grant..
In other words business as it has been with a few nice temporary factors like winter payments.
Real change will come if they:
1. Increase benefits as per WEAG
2. Put comprehensive rent controls in – I favour the New York type rent control where a rent board decides how much rents can go up each year – hint it isn't much.
3. Reduce the age of NZS back to 60 to level the playing field more for those with disabilities and Maori who have shorter life expectancy – just get the super back through taxation for those who both work and get NZS – the extra money will provide economic stimulus as well.
Of course none of these things will happen but lots of money will be spent on infrastructure projects, short-term work schemes and so on.
“I would like to know whether any prospective beneficiaries have gone into depression and worst still, could not see a way out of it due to lack of financial help.”
You might want to include current beneficiaries in that question.
Would he be better off to register a company and apply for a small business loan from the IRD at 0% if that is possible. I'm all for the small business support but I'm sure as repayment time approaches at least some will collapse the company rather than repay the money. Is the IRD taking a personal guarantee?
Maybe not for the IRD. but surely Winz could at least jam through a basic benefit for applicants and catch up with the detail later. Everyone else seems to be getting the high trust model. And no I don't warm to Carmel or the labour party handling of the wage paid workforce or those who need Winz.
Except they seem to divert excess resources to those on super – so the older's don't complain.
So you use this to attack those receiving superannuation…?…w t.f..!…one thing the ardern gummint mk 1. did for those on super..was nothing…but there was no complaint/lobbying from the oldies…'cos they know that poverty for sole-parent/the unemployed..and their children.. is far worse …..your imputation that ardern has been filling the coffers of the elderly to the detriment of those living in poverty..with 'excess resources'..is factually incorrect..and is bullshit-on-a-stick..
Didn't mean that to sound as an attack on superannuitants.
I was talking about the service level (not money) that superannuitants seem to get from Winz and I know some who feel deeply uncomfortable about it being so good when the rest of the service seems so bad. My point was that if Winz can do a decent service level for the supers then they could do the same for everyone else as well. Second point was "is the service level so high to stop any potential complainers" .
@ r. baron…Point taken…there is a seachange in attitude from how the unemployed etc. are treated…as to how superannuitants are looked after…it is palpable..that change…and yes..there is no reason why those in need of state support should be treated so shabbily by the govt. department tasked with caring for them..
Who said WINZ do a decent service for the elderly ? I advocated very recently for NZ Super clients ; waited for nearly an hour only to be told that a return call would be made in the next 24 hours. And when pressed for a more exact time we were told " What does it matter ? You have all the time in the world now".
And the return call never came.
As always you've plumped for a gross generalisation, but there are clearly wealthy on super with mortgage free million dollar homes and large savings accounts. Aren't they having their considerable resources bumped up by a payment that could, and should, be used to assist the lowest income earners?
As for bullshit on a stick – Have you tried holding the other end?
See my replies to the others –
Parliamentarians? I doubt that they will cut their cloth. 165k income, bonus, health and super paid for, transport etc…. yeah, it must be truly difficult.
@ the allen…means-testing of superannuitants is a separate issue…(one I have sympathy for)…you are conflating the two…
B.t.w…those rich boomers don't have to suck from the superannuation-trough…it's not compulsory..you have to apply for it…those rich taking it are just greedy bastards…end-of-story..
You are right , you do have to apply to be a superannuate, it is not automatic. Those who really don,t need it have applied for it.
Not a separate issue at all as it speaks directly to your rejection of the premise that "ardern has been filling the coffers of the elderly to the detriment of those living in poverty", when that is exactly what happens when a wealthy senior takes the pension.
Of course, I didn’t generalise and claim all seniors – Just the wealthy ones with no morality and/or civic responsibility.
@ the allen..your final sentence/question is meaningless…are you having a go @ humour..?
And there are also elderly whose rent takes most of their super and who have had to run their savings down to qualify for any supplements, making living a bit precarious.
And, all over the country pensioner units are being sold off in the larger cities.
All equally true and valid observations.
Ah yes, just play one group of vulnerable against the other.
What about those BILLIONS! we, the taxpayer have forked out to give a 50% state company like Air NZ board some enormous share option and bonus pay. Or all those other companies with huge profits sponging of the low pay and slim middle class? Only a government where non of those sitting ever had anything like an "essential" job can come up with a farce like that.
See above. I was on service level not money. All should enjoy the same service level as the supers.
And I'm as deeply unhappy about about AirNZ as a lot of other corporate behaviour I Have complained about on here
Indeed the service level is as unfair a playing field as the weekly pay cheques given.
One lot just have to prove to be old, the others tasked with myriad hoop jumping to often get much less.
I've spent some time thinking how shareholders could reign in the excesses of the managerial class who are the main beneficiaries of business profits at the expense of both labour and to some extent capital providers. Both capital providers and labour lose if a business goes broke but the managerial class just banks the gains.
Shareholders can pass meeting resolutions. The best I've come up with so far is for the top 5% to 10% of earners (based on FTE wages) in a company can earn only x times the median wagein the company , or maybe x times the FTE of the bottom 50%.
If there was a pool set for the top earners then they could could fight it out amongst them selves and pay the high priced technocrat they need more than the generalist manager. It's how to set that pool – and as I say these thoughts are a work in progress.
In the meantime Airnz shareholder aka the government should be on the phone. If they did not know then they need a CEO with a little more vision and political smarts.
"they need a CEO with a little more vision and political smarts.".
I'm sorry but the last CEO they had with those skills resigned and left the airline on September 25 last year. He has picked up a new job since that time.
Still he will probably have the responsibility as the share-holding Minister in about 3 years time. You can but hope.
Alwynger you must be joking you know nothing or are Gerry Brownlee.
All Airlines have suffered catastrophic losses to blame the CEO who was the former CEO of Walmart a business bigger than the whole of New Zealands economy .
He has been given a hospital pass.
He turned Walmarts fortunes around was on a massive income before he took on the role of CEO of Air NZ for pocket change .
He changed the way Walmart treated staff making sure staff were remunerated well as opposed to the minimum wage ideology of the founder and previous CEO's .
Now a vaccine is looking more hopeful we need his nouse and connections to rebuild Air New Zealand.
You really are delusional aren't you?
Why are you addressing your comment to me instead of to the Red Baron?
He (or she) is the one who was complaining about the nous of the current CEO of Air New Zealand.
Still I should not be surprised. You were the one who, the other day, seemed to think that I approved of Trump. Clearly your comprehension of things verges on the side of incoherence. You also seem to be quite incapable of even spelling my name. I guess your end of year school report should simply say "Must try harder"
Alwynger i take poetic license to take you to task over your continual whinging and untruths about any Left wing initiatives.
Your right up their with Gosman with your cynicism.
If you put facts up like how Mike Sabin resigned and NZfirst reduced The National majority even further would be good.
I did have dyslexia growing up not unlike Winston Churchill who struggled with school till he turned 19 then it suddenly disappeared where he went on to be one of the most influential people in history and is responsible for you not speaking Japanese or German and allowing you to have the freedom to speak at all.I was at the bottom of most of my classes during high school but not long before I turned 16 a light switched on and suddenly I went to the top of the class in most subjects except English comprehension.
Suddenly I could speed read whole books libraries of books .
When it comes to knowledge I am a library you are a cheap gossip magazine.
Alwyn shifting the blame lame.
You make comments that Christopher luxton was a better CEO .At a time when international tourism grew exponentially ,its easy to look good when business expands without having to do much.
Your ACT party would have let AirNZ go to the wall no govt help.
As for government loans to start a business….here
Who can get it
You may be able to get a Self-employment start up payment if:
The maximum payout is $10,000 in one year, and you or your partner will need to be already receiving a WINZ benefit.
see here : https://www.workandincome.govt.nz/products/a-z-benefits/self-employment-start-up-payment.html
Covid contingency small business loan – administered by IRD
https://www.business.govt.nz/news/covid-19-support-for-small-businesses/
so again, its not just done by registering a company, you actually have to prove you have a viable business in order to get the business contingency loan, or alternatively you have to be on a WINZ benefit to apply for hte Self Employment Start Up.
If there is a 0% interest business loan other then that that is available through IRD please link as that would be interesting news.
First question , has he gone looking for work ?
What has he looking for a job got to do with a Failure of Winz to do the job they are paid to do? Namely answering the phones in a timely manner, scheduling person/person meetings to get paperwork sorted and benefits given should all legal requirements be met?
Janet, are you joking? Of cause my friend did (he or she). But that short time before Christmas coupled with a person being in their 50's seem to be the combination that really gets you into some serious trouble.
Euthanasia anybody?
But maybe you know how to get a handout like Air NZ or Briscoes. Very grateful for any hint.
Well actually "Christmas coming and being in their 50.s " sounds a bit like an excuse not to be looking for a job .
My friend is looking for a job rest assured. Do you honestly believe you can feed a family on a benefit? Not to mention that this friend has worked all their life and find themselves for the first time in such situation. Do you actually understand what such event does to you psychologically? The anguish not to be able get bills paid, the sleepless nights, the worry. No wonder people kill themselves in droves here.
I don't have words for you comments really – you really don't know what the back ground is and put a judgement onto this person. Are you working for WINZ?
No I am not judging. I support the UBI theory where we do not have to be in your friends position, hanging on the whims of WINZ. We have a funny situation here in NZ at the moment. In front of me I have the latest Farmers Weekly … screaming out for workers in horticulture, diarying you name it. Screaming at the government for not bringing migrant workers in . Migrant workers who up and leave their wives and families for 6 months or more to pick up a dollar in NZ. They go home "rich " men in the societies they come from, but their being here has in the meantime held down wages, making it unattractive for ours to now go out and pick up these jobs.
Somehow we have to get this situation rebalanced , without migrant workers. In the end it will mean our food costs more…
This is true but equally one cannot expect someone to uproot the family, maybe renting the house (mortgaged) out and paying rent at the other end, new schools for the kids and all that for a few months. As a report recently showed, it is for the majority work at minimum rate. My friend has arthritis which really makes picking in the orchards etc not a viable option. I also think we need to be careful to abstain from asking every unemployed person to take up picking "for the good of the nation", it borders on forced labour.
BTW, I am very much for the UBI which would as a very desirable side effect by removing a large swat of bureaucrats who believe they can play god with peoples lives.
I agree with the advice about local MP and a beneficiary advocate.
Privatising WINZ would make it worse. There's not good reason why WINZ can't function well other than the ideologies of successive governments (Nat and Lab) that have fucked the system up so much. At the moment it's under staffing.
IMO Carmel Sepuloni should be replaced.
Pfizer's vaccine looking promising but still a fair bit of follow up to do.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/09/covid-19-vaccine-from-pfizer-and-biontech-is-strongly-effective-early-data-from-large-trial-indicate/
I'm becoming more confident that we'll see a vaccine available for us in NZ towards the middle of next year.
They will have billion of them by the end of the year.
We should have half of our share (M) 500,000 by mid-year. Plenty for the health workers/aged care workers, border workers, front of public workers and workers with pre existing conditions.
We also have stakes in other vaccines in development – such as the Oxford one. Hopefully another 1.5M of these as well.
That would be around 4M by the end of next year – about how many would take a vaccine.
All going well, If there is a global rollout of an effective vaccine by the middle of next year it will have been a remarkable achievement by the scientific and engineering community involved in its research and development and product.
Australia is already manufacturing 30 million doses in the hope the trials are safe.So they can be ready to go immediately the OK is given.
At some level I must confess a small enjoyment about having the country to ourselves seeing home grown talent etc. ( but not at the price of a pandemic of course) .
But I'm not sure that I want to see everything just returning to the "old normal" without whittling out industries and settings that do not work for all of us.
But I'm not sure that I want to see everything just returning to the "old normal" without whittling out industries and settings that do not work for all of us.
Agreed – it would be nice for a bit of a reset in certain areas, hopefully there'll be further gains regarding flexibility with how and where people work and lessons learned about our country's vulnerabilities to circumstances out of our control.
I suspect I may be disappointed and we'll see the return of the previous normal.
flexibility with how and where people work
You know, the labour 'market' is entirely too free already. Free to break our immigration laws in a systematic fashion. Free to enjoy the blind eye of corrupt officials and ministers unfit to exercise their warrants.
If government want NZ to work, they have to work themselves. We have those immigration rules for a very sound and well-established reason, and if, as seems to be the case, the government is so out of touch they don't understand that, all they need to do is see that the law is obeyed. Their job, in case any of them wants to pretend otherwise.
Do your job Mr Faafoi, or resign in favour of someone who will.
It's going to take at least 3 to 5yrs before Airlines get reestablished let alone the tourists trust in travel ,have enough money to travel.Airlines won't be doing discounting until the volume builds up.
Word is circulating that we are expecting to have vaccinations rolling out by mid 2021. (Not sure which particular vaccine it will be.)
Not sure if there will be a mutation which could be ineffective with the new vaccine.
Would a different vaccine be required for each mutation or strain?
Treetop Very likely like the current flu vaccine
.
Oh no ! … actor Gabriel Byrne a "convergence moonbat" too ?
http://web.archive.org/web/20201108220809/https://amp.theguardian.com/film/2020/nov/08/gabriel-byrne-its-an-obscenity-to-tell-innocent-children-theyre-going-to-hell
Principled, independent thought … concern not so much for the bloated self-absorption of Upper-Middle Clintonistas & Intersectionals … more for the interests of Blue Collar America (even those really yukky ones who have white skin & are male … Ewwww Yuck !!!) … well, it's Crazyville, isn't it ? You mark my words, those God-forsaken Ruskies are behind this !!! … Damn you, Putin, damn you to hell !!!
more for the interests of Blue Collar America (even those really yukky ones who have white skin & are male
And the black Americans who live in crime ridden cities who know that BLM's calls to abolish the police are nothing but disaster for them. Or the Latinos who migrated to the USA knowing that far from a racist hell hole, that it was their best opportunity to make a better life for themselves, look at arsonists burning down businesses … and their empathy lies firmly with owners of them.
Denial and blame and loathing and all the stages of grief just get rolled up into one tired F-grade actor's armwaving.
Before his next Oscar nomination he needs a good sized paper bag for an inhale session.
The old, anyone to the left of control has to be part of chaos, trick.
You don't agree with this then?
“Nothing much will change under Biden because his thing is: let’s return America to what it was. Well, what America was caused Trump. The Democrats rolled out the red carpet (for him).”
my bold
No.
That quote is as stupid as it sounds.
Call me when AOC achieves something in politics other getting re-elected.
AOC already has achieved something huge.
She has shown that an ordinary person can achieve political success in the USA while at the same time eschewing donations from the wealthy and corporates.
Nothing new in that. Not even particularly remarkable.
@ad…so what did that 'actor' say that is factually incorrect…?…b.t.w…did you call 2016 for clinton .?..you are a man riddled with yr certainties ..so I doubt you sat on the fence…
Well, it's his perspective, but there's nothing particularly crazy in what he says. There's the usual conceit that he knows "blue collar workers" better than other wealthy people do, but there doesn't seem to be much of the thinly-veiled references to "soros" and all that veiled-nazi jazz.
Didn't you hear the election is over and Trump lost, republicans lost, moonbats lost and wingnuts lost. You don't go messing around with the opinion filters on the back of that sort of outcome!
So, what you're saying is that everyone lost and there's still a bunch of elected dictators in power?
I'm saying you know the guy won you know the thing and so you know the bank is now in charge.
Agree with Gabriel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0YTM8iO4_s&t=6s
Too simple for Trump to say, I concede pending on the recount.
An attempt to unseat the chairman of the West Coast Conservation Board has fallen flat.
"Keith Morfett was recently reappointed to the board for a second term by then-Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage.
But Ngai Tahu is challenging the minister's appointment process in the High Court after accusing the conservation board of ignoring its Treaty obligations and being in thrall to environmental groups such as Forest and Bird."
https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/west-coast/morfett-reappointed-conservation-board
"in thrall to environmental groups such as Forest and Bird." ? ! Well that might not be what Ngai Tahu's in thrall of….maybe Money?
It's inevitable that conflicts will arise between government environmental ideas and Maori. Please just stick to facts and avoid taking sides against Maori, 'pour encourager les autres'.
Ah…..any reading of my Posts/Comments on here would see that I dont "take sides against Maori"…….
However I dont see Ngai Tahu as particularly "Enviro" or…Green. Quite the Business First Org.
And this was Forest and Bird they were chipping at….
My View…and I will stand by it.!
As American as apple pie. Just add cream.
https://i.imgflip.com/4lpyqg.jpg
Matt King (ex MP for Northland) was given the opportunity for a pity-party on TVNZ1 Breakfast show this morning. No questions about his Twitter attacks with misinformation on climate change, no questions about name calling the PM and about the Labour Party creating a Nazi society, no questions about his actively flouting and encouraging others to flout Covid Rules but they did politely sympathize with his loss and branding him a nice guy. Not so convinced were the viewers apparently, feedback suggesting he should take a little responsibility instead of his sense of entitlement and blaming everyone but himself and his Party. Happy Days
Happy days indeed. Locals had road checks earlier in the year worried that covid-19 would come into the region. A bit of a fuss ensued but most locals were not phased about the politics. Being alive and well and having someone seeking to protect them was welcomed.
Of course there was a constituency to appeal to, to rouse and harness in election year. It is the Far North. We have red necks. King got in the car with family just to 'go for a drive to show then around'. Into the road checks no less. Fancy that, an opportunity, a cunning stunt.
A lot of them voted for him of course, most didn't.
A focus about the tide turning in mainly rural South Island has meant scant attention to the reality at the other end of the country.
In the two northernmost general electorates so solidly National for generations, that party was comprehensively thrashed. King should have stayed home, saved his petrol.
Matt was invited by Hone Harawira, to attend a Te Tai Tokerau Border Patrol for a day near Kaikohe, with Police presence! and he never turned up. He had been trying to rile his pākehā supporters about “the mareeees and their illegal road blocks”, but actually a number of non Māori in the North supported the Iwi Border Patrols.
Mr King tried to be the Trump of the North on Facebook, but regularly got fact checked and shamed, he never turned up to any invitations to debate any of the bs he put out there. A mate of mine saw him at the Dargaville A&P two years back, and King stuck his hand out, “not shaking your hand you effing fascist” was the response, King was shocked. Dunno where my mate got that classic line from but it sat the ex MP down for a minute.
Sounds a bit 'Rick' from The Young Ones.
And Awesome Willow-Jean win ! : )
King probably attended on the basis that it would be a pity-party.
TVNZ/RNZ may as well be corporate media as King's fair game and it would've been great TV watching him dance on the head of a pin if some actual journalism was practiced.
Hosking fearmongering undone by Robertson.
Hosking had a rant about the govts debt around covid response saying 42 organizations wanting up to $150 a week increases on benefits was causing eye watering increases in debt,and that NZ was the only country in the OECD that had increased the benefit rates by a lousy $25 other than Hong Kong .
Then Robertson comes on his show and quietly undoes all his BS.GrantRobertson also gives Hosking an update on how the economy has bounced back a lot quicker than expected.
Good on Robertson for his stellar work on the economy and his cool calm collected communication style .
[Second time: please stick to one e-mail address, thanks]
[Second time: please stick to one e-mail address, thanks]
edit
Are we concreted in on some Covid-19 decisions that should be constantly revised?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/430230/man-in-miq-blown-away-seeing-staff-only-wearing-surgical-masks
Health workers in New Zealand quarantine hotels are some of the worst protected in the developed world, according to a man in managed isolation who's helped kit out medical staff all over the world.
And we care don’t we for St Johns. Management may be being too neo lib perhaps pay high at top but workers?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018772011/paramedics-vote-for-strike-action-we-feel-st-john-don-t-really-care
The organisation has financial difificulties partly from the pandemic impacting fund-raising. Peters was right to call for better government contribution.
St John's shouldn't even be a private organisation.
What to do when your caucus is now only 33?
Bridges for Finance?
Reti for Deputy?
What to do with Nick Smith?
How to bury Paul Goldsmith?
Erica Stanford anyone?
What stars will rise in the firmament in 2021 from the political ash-heap of 2020?
Anyone feeling it?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/national-mps-meet-to-decide-their-next-deputy-leader-after-their-devastating-election-loss/SUBI3OEOSHWRCNV4QJMWGBSD2M/
Erica Stanford would be the obvious candidate to take over the Blue-Green mantle from Nick Smith. Such as it is, anyways.
The slippery old eel Nick Smith will he slither away or hang around time for this environmental disaster to go.
I'd quite like for him to asphyxiate quietly in one of our many polluted waterways.
Do you think that National will be more united with 33 caucus members?
Looks like Collins has already traded places with her deputy within minutes of his appointment. Void of original thought, of course, but ironically, may well be a good move.
“Dr Reti’s knowledge and history working in the health sector will be an asset as Parliament deals with the impact of Covid-19. His experience will be invaluable to me as deputy leader and I’m looking forward to working closer with him.”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/123350020/shane-reti-elected-unopposed-as-new-deputy-leader-of-the-national-party
Lol good one Chris.
You never know what might happen.
After all, following the 2014 election National had 60 seats and Labour had 32.
Labour recovered enough to form the Government after the following election.
Now Labour have 65 and National have 33 which is pretty much the same thing. Who knows but history may repeat and we will have a change of Government in 2023. After all we aren't likely to have another pandemic are we?
Well not until the next one.
Do you think world leaders have worked out that the next time a pandemic erupts that shutting the planet down (human activity) for 6 weeks is the cheapest option.
The appropriate response will depend on how it spreads, infectiousness profile over time, and no doubt a bunch of other factors an infectious disease specialist could bore us all to tears with.
For instance, if the next one is some sort of turbo-hepatitis where the spread is mostly through food and transferring infectious material on surfaces, and people can be infectious for decades, then the appropriate response will be quite different to a shutdown.
Unfortunately I am forced to agree with you.
Can I change the last sentence to "After all, perhaps we will be lucky enough not to have another pandemic so quickly"?
Alwyn your lame claim doesn't add up how come National only had a 2 seat majority relying on the relying on the Maori Party.
Labour Greens Maori Party have a 30 seat majority given the Maori Party will not go with National again.
Alwynger your living in the past first past the post.
We are lucky here in Godzone on how we do politics. On Stuff this morning there is video of Smith conceding Nelson to Rachel Boyack and while I am not in any way a fan of his he has to be commended for the gracious manner in which he did it and the exceptional way that the Nelson Labour crew treated him. Well done everybody. It is well worth a look just to reinforce how thankful we should be about how civilised we are here.
yes, even with polies you despise , you know they still have NZ best interest at heart . looking at many of the overseas polies? maybe not.
Well we probably should give these visa holders their money back. But 23,000 visa's which is probably not the lot, is an awful lot of competition for our young NEETS in the job market – for the 50,000 or so who enter it every year. Any chance of Labour rejiging this? Unlikely.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/travel-troubles/123334850/working-holiday-visa-holders-stuck-offshore-beg-for-extensions-to-entry-date
Working Holidays are an outcome of reciprocal agreements with other countries, so we could scrap them, but that would probably result the end of the equivalent schemes, so instead of competing with foreign workers, they would compete with young NZ workers who didn't go on their OEs.
Yeh Nah I haven't looked up any actual figures – don't even know if they exist in total but our birth cohorts are in the 50-60k a year zone hence around that number onto the labour market a year.
Now if we do straight number swaps eg we issue 10 to the UK and they issue 10 to NZ it is going to have a far greater impact on our labour market as we have a much smaller population. Some of the countries mentioned in the article are aslo unlikely I suspect to provide much in the way of kiwi jobs – some of the south americain countries. But 23K is a lot and that won't be all. I really can't see that number of Kiwis leaving . and the ones that stay have to compete with student visas and other low waged immigration as well.
Well Dr Reti, I hope you've packed your magic undies, 'cause you've sure got a shitty new job.
Especially when his leader says she's looking forward to working "closer" with him.
further nats news, maureen pugh has gone from phucking useless ,to a promotion up the list, to whip. she is getting her numbers ready for a rural takeback of the nats! with dr shane as her deputy, that would cover most of the nats trad voters, just need to keep bridges around to appeal to the whiney suitwearers.
It's less a job, more a summer internship, duties amount to nodding on camera beside a leader who will be gone soon. Still, it puts him on the (very) short list for next leader, and they could do a lot worse – and probably will.
National deputy leaders of 2020, a brief history: Bennett – quit Parliament. Kaye – quit Parliament. Brownlee – lost seat. Reti – lost seat.
I don't think any party anywhere can boast such a record.
heh
https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1325937738311413760
It's Farrar's 'dream' team. History shows that what goes on in that head's reverie is likely to be some sort of hallucinogenic weirdness.
Deeply disappointed in the cannabis referendum. The combination of punitive, vindictive sanctimonious, self righteous, fake christians and false moralists with the justice industry [cops lawyers judges corrections and would be counsellors looking for a gig] was too much for the referendumb to bear. plus the spiteful bastards against everything. The way Andrew Little brushed it off and then dodged a bullet by jettisoning justice was shameful.As a committed advocate for the working man I am never going to vote for the running dogs of capitalism but the "vote" will go to the greens next time
and if they decriminalise?
life will go on as normal. if Portugal is any example usage will decrease and the kidz who get upin front of the beak and say"it woz the drugz wot made me do it" will have to be responsible for their actions.
it was more how you would respond if they decriminalised…would you then vote for them?
Cannabis is not the only problem with this government….and all the problems..inaction on poverty/environment/animal welfare etc etc..on and on it goes..can all be tracked back to the fact that labour is yet to realise it is clutching to a failed/bankrupt ideology…neoliberalism…as you look around the world its' failures are legion..increasing inequality..fucking up the environment…and doing basically nothing to fix the problems we have…and labour has long wed incrementalism to to that bankrupt neoliberalism…this is what has been the ideology of both our main parties since after the second lange govt and Ruth richardson's magic poverty wand was waved…helen clark/are/were neoliberal incrementalists to the core…(and they are now advising ardern..a fact that chills the blood)..and ardern/robertson learnt at the knees of clark/cullen…and what clark thought of from day one of each term and what drove her actions/inaction was the next election ..doing what she had to do to win that next election..(hence large wedges of middle-class welfare..and the poor can just rot..)…ardern/robertson are following in those shoes ..and the country cannot expect any meaningful change any time soon…(and when did it become the norm that for any pissant/small change that is made…we are made to wait eons for it to actually be enacted..?..when the f. did that delayed-gratification become the norm..?..)…as long as ardern/ labour fly that neoliberal flag..nothing much will change…but the warning for ardern is that what clark did so successfully will not work again…and she should know that when she/labour fail to deliver..that there is now another party the disappointed/disgruntled can turn to at the next election…who they know will do all the shit that needs doing…the greens…so if she doesn't deliver at the next election those tories disgusted with the current iteration/doings of the national party..will likely return home..and the left will turn en masse to the greens….and the centre will not be the certainty she now thinks it is…
ok….but it was a specific question in relation to R P McMurphy's post "Deeply disappointed in the cannabis referendum…."
Im quite sure that there will be many rationales for people not to vote Labour should they so choose
I've just been saying on The Daily Blog in response to Martyn's criticism of Jacinda's neglect of the beneficiaries while spouting away about them in her slogans, if she thinks she can get away with that via her professional careerist apparatchiks and public popularity her neglect of the thinking Left will involve a serious cost.
The Maori Labour MPs, to be taken at all seriously, should have demanded the Welfare Experts Group Report to be adopted immediately. Duds.
Reading the comments above we all seem to be seething about the neglect of beneficiaries.
The marijuana push-back suggests there's work to do and Labour's focus groups might have something to them. When America has gone full-on grass liberalisation it suggests timidity is the essential part of the Party. Why I voted Little for leader and have never voted for Labour.
The timidity was at the birth, though Trotter calls it realism, when the 1935 govt wouldn't put my g.great grandfather in the Legislative Council because of his outright socialism. He got nationalisation of the means of production passed at the British Labour AGM in 1908. If he'd stayed in England he would have been a Lord.