According to Pete George, this does not constitute a crisis for our democracy.
Bryce Edwards sees it differently.
Nearly 64% of the electorate did NOT vote.
18% of the electorate voted for Bidois.
“But what about the fact that there was a low voter turnout. According to the Electoral Commission, voter turnout is estimated to be 43.7%. This figure is based on the numbers that have voted, as a percentage of those enrolled. However, the Electoral Commission and Statistics New Zealand previously estimated that in Northcote there is an eligible voter population of 54,790 (of which about nine per cent are not enrolled). So, when you take that into account, the 19,900 who voted, make up an even smaller “real” voter turnout – which is well under 40%.
It also means that the vote for each candidate as a proportion of all eligible voters in Northcote is somewhat smaller than it might initially appear, since about 35,000 eligible voters choose not to vote – which somewhat overshadows the 10,147 who voted for the winning candidate.”
Compulsory voting is the solution. Oz have done it for decades and there’s engagement across the demographics as a result.
National rejected that along with pretty much every other suggested reform, my how surprising. Keeps the bastards honest, where that’s practical for some parties, when they know the disaffected are forced to vote.
Like road rules they serve a greater good even if they’re not popular.
This was a by-election at the start of the term of a new government for a seat previously held by the opposition. Of course turnout will be low. There was nothing really at stake. Jumping up and down and trying to call this the death of democracy in NZ is ridiculous.
Does it Draco? This from a stuff article after their 2016 Federal Election:
“A long winter federal election campaign in Australia that clashed with school holidays has resulted in the biggest voter no-show in the country since compulsory voting began in 1925.
More than 1.4 million Australians last month failed to cast a vote for the House of Representatives in what ultimately became a cliff-hanger election. The figure represents more than 9 per cent of 15.7 million eligible voters.
The turnout is the worst since 1922, when voting was optional and just 59 per cent of eligible people cast a lower house vote.”
It’s a political hot potato. As you say, it’s those doing it toughest that are least inclined to vote. Fining those that struggle to keep food up to mouths is popularity suicide. If zero punitive measures against non voters, there’s no point introducing the fresh law.
Yeah ok, I’ve gone and done some more reading on it. I’m not as partisan as I was. I lived in Oz for a long period, it is no hardship to vote. Chasing up non voters appears to be a token effort, 12 people in Darwin taken to court after the last election.
I dread the influx in….”I voted for that chappie with the straight teeth, whatisname? I once saw him in a Crusaders jersey” vox pops.
Chasing up non voters appears to be a token effort, 12 people in Darwin taken to court after the last election.
I suspect that it actually isn’t. Most would be given a warning and to vote next time or else. Many would be given the voting slip and told here and now or else.
You probably just don’t hear about it which is unfortunate.
If you’re not on the electoral roll how do they know who to chase up?
Just because you’re not on the electoral roll doesn’t mean that you can’t be traced. Got a bank account? Pay your taxes? Drive a car?
Yeah, I’m one of the few people who have no difficulty with the government doing data matching to catch criminals. Especially when those criminals are fucking over our democracy.
But also, in order to enrol you have to sign a form. No person can legally be forced to sign any form they don’t wish to sign.
It is a legal requirement to be enrolled. You must sign that form whether you like it or not.
According to Pete George, this does not constitute a crisis for our democracy.
Bryce Edwards sees it differently.
How exactly does Bryce Edwards see it differently, Ed? His piece is actually very noncommittal and empty of firm opinion on the matter at hand.
I think your comment has put a few here on the wrong foot …
You could have made the argument as to why you think the numbers reflect badly on the current state of our representative democracy but you didn’t. Why not?
I am struggling to work out what Andrew Little was thinking in putting about his agenda to dump the three strikes legislation without first getting his political ducks in a row. Is he a political idiot?
Little floats idea, gives Winston the opportunity to make his mark, both postpone the issue for a while and a satisfactory result flies through the House; everybody wins. Meanwhile, the Right enjoy a temporary lift, to no eventual gain. The Coalition Government works, and is seen to be working, as it should.
8.3 and in any case, is your “dogs” reference to the poor autistic man, savaged yesterday by rottweilers near Winton? That’s harsh for this time of the morning, Ruby. For any time really.
That seems an excessively generous interpretation to me.
Occam’s says more like Little, who was a politically inept leader, simple fucked up the politics.
I agree the politics are nowhere near as bad as our aggressively authoritarian political media seem to think, but the Likes of Audrey Young seem very under employed most of the time. Not a lot of substance happens in our politics, so they are reduced to making mountains out of molehills and reporting two flies climbing a wall with breathless urgency.
I just wonder why they don’t occupy their copious spare time writing in depth backgrounders.
“politically inept leader”, even if true, doesn’t translate to inept politician. I suggest that in fact, Little is a good and efficient politician, especially when out of the “leader” spotlight. In this instance we can only speculate, but my view is that he’s not so “inept” as to be unaware of what Winston’s position would invariably have been, and in fact played the game to the satisfaction of all-but-you (and some other posters 🙂
Now this is clearly overblown but Politics is as much about perception than reality and if the perception is a Government that is unstable soon enough it will be.
Headlines, schmedlines – they’re froth, Gosman, eye-catching dross, the don’t mean anything; that you’re enchanted by them is… a shame. Nevermind, there are others who can see past the headlines .
Your believing that illusions are real is … cute. Serious political commenters though, don’t fall for illusions. The Government won’t become “unstable” simply because National declares that to be the case; your confidence in that sort of fickleness marks you as … fickle.
Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your point of view) serious political commentators don’t generally dictate the popularity of political parties. If the perception gains traction that a governing coalition is unstable then people will think is is likely to fall and stop supporting it. Yes this is unfair to a degree but it is political reality.
Three years of parties disagreeing in public (but respectfully) without the government being brought down will show those headlines as stupid.
The media need crises to sell copy. I can understand why the populace might not be used to a government of adults, but they’ll learn what should be the norm rater than the exception.
I was thinking about that possibility except it has had a negative impact on the Government generally. It looks like the political management skills of Little and by extension the PM are flawed. Just listen to the attack by Guyon Espiner on Morning report this morning.
Guyon’s attack was, by accounts I’ve read, a failed one. Little would have been attacked even more vigorously, had his proposal gone ahead un-modified, as you know – Farrar et al would have been shrieking heedlessly; as it is, they’re crowing prematurely. What the media does is of little consequence, pun intended, and a smart operator will play them. Little’s a clever guy and Winston’s not too shabby either.
Little clever? Nah, he’s either stupid or arrogant. Clearly he didn’t have NZF on board with the three strikes policy, and Peters has rescued his plummeting polling at the expense of the hapless Mr Little.
Little should never had floated this idea as essentially a done deal. He could have made out that he was very keen to review the law including and then allowed Winston credit for nixing it.
The whole thing has been a shambles.
Luckily Winston’s going after MSD and Bennett et al plus the shenanigans in Singapore will quickly push it off the news cycle (for now).
But the ongoing government messiness and poor comms etc can only be explained away by Ardern for so long before it starts to become a major liability.
“the ongoing government messiness” is a message constructed and broadcast by the Right. There’s a grain of truth in it, as there would be for any and every “new” coalition Government, but the blue magnifying glass is being held over that small issue as part of National’s programme of denigrating the Government.
I admire your rather generous assessment of the situation Robert and I’d like to be able to agree with you but I can’t.
Three Strikes and law and order issues generally are just too sensitive electorally to be allowed to play out like this has. Apparently there was almost outright panic in Little’s office a week or so ago when the OIA on 3 strikes was released to media and they realised how it was going to go.
Oh well, I can’t argue with “apparently”…
Mind you, to say that “Three Strikes and law and order issues generally are just too sensitive electorally” shows me that any approach would bring problems, so this way, the usual attack lines are blurred and criticism blunted; in fact, the “usual suspects” are crowing with delight; that’s a pretty clever strategy if in fact, Little and Peters colluded. I’d do it the way they have; play some feints and switches and slip the soul through while confusion reigns.
That’s the thing though, apart from the lock-‘em-up-and-throw-away-the -key crowd pleasers any sensible measures on crime and justice are always problematic to put in front of the electorate.
It’s hard to see how giving the Opposition and their pals in the media an even bigger stick with which to beat the government on this is going to blur attack lines and blunt criticism?
Hard to see? Not for me 🙂
Will the Government get a progressive package of law & order reforms through in the near future? Yes, I believe they will. Will there be less noise around it, due to the “moderating” effect of Winston’s recent action? Yes, I believe there will. Clever play? Yes, I still believe so. I don’t take much note of the wailing and gnashing of Righty teeth around this issue.
What is missing throughout this debate, especially in the MSM, is the fact the 3 Strikes is a stupid politically motivated law, a blunt instrument that doesn’t work.
The MSM, if it was being even-handed, should be making the point that Labour and the Greens are right to try to get it repealed rather than treating this as an issue they hope will destroy the coalition.
Well done Andrew Little for sticking to his guns on Morning Report this morning.
An even-handed MSM would do itself out of a job, consequently, it always tips the table one way or the other, to maintain tension. We readers love tension; makes us feel alive!
Recent history would indicate our MSM are incapable of/disinterested in exploring the effects of policy as opposed to ‘political drama’…..and yet ‘we’ persist in our support.
““the ongoing government messiness” is a message constructed and broadcast by the Right.”
No, the messiness is surely and simply the result of inexperience combined with incompetence mixed with hubris. From the coalition agreement that gifted a billion dollars to a NZF slush fund, to the election of the Speaker (Labour’s screw up and then cover up), to the disgraceful decision making around oil and gas exploration, through to the incompetence of MIA Ministers such as Curran, Jackson, Davis, Twyford et al, this is a shambolic government mislead by a PM whose previous claim to fame had been working in a fish and chip shop. You were warned.
No, the messiness is natural and unavoidable. It’s the reporting that’s unnatural; the endless whine that you are part of, babayaga, that’s the twitter. Plus, You Have Been Warned!!!
Bomber’s on the money here.
“By publicly dumping a law that was only rhetoric and theatre in the first place (it’s only impacted 20 prisoners) Labour…
gives NZ First oxygen at a time when Labour desperately requires their coalition partners to survive
blunts National’s law and order attack which they will be playing all year with new tough on crime members bills.
Allows the perception to the petty consumers of bitterness that Labour have had to back down on prison reform when the actual process will continue. Liberal twitter and NGOs on twitter will lambast Little and scream at the injustice which will convince the petty consumers of bitterness in muddle Nu Zilind that Labour must have changed their position to outrage the Twitterratti in such a way.
Little loses the battle so he can win the war.”
If thats true its a bit short sighted because from now until the next election National can point to Labour being soft on crime so a vote for NZFirst is a vote for being soft on crime whereas a vote for National is a vote for three strikes
I’m sure he’s like most politicians, a decent, well meaning, reasonably intelligent person.
However your question: “Is he a political idiot?” is an easy question to answer. He’s failed twice to win an electorate seat and was driving Labour to oblivion before he did the smartest thing he’s ever likely to do, politically, and resign so yes, politically speaking, he is an idiot
However he is rocking a decent beard so thats something in his favour
You call that a beard?
It is just like Mallard’s.
All it is is that the hair from the top of his head has slipped down his face.
The only halfway decent beard any recent MP has had is the one Gareth Hughes showed off.
That added about 10 years to his age and made him look old enough to vote.
Even then he couldn’t compare to some of the early PMs like Seddon, Vogel, Stafford or Weld.
Best I can manage is councillor, Southland Regional Council, 2010 – 2018. I wonder if I’m on my own in being a bearded councillor in NZ? I certainly don’t meet many others.
They do, yes; well, mostly. I was told by my wife’s maiden aunt, way back, that she could “never make love to a man with a beard”. I guessed she meant something more arcane than it seemed by that, but still, I was taken aback. Didn’t stop me though!
“Didn’t stop me though”
How could I let that slip through???
I’m a “share the love” kinda guy. Truth to tell, Maiden Aunt’s comments didn’t deter me from wooing her niece (much more seemly, aye, though not quite the story it was shaping up to be 🙂
Crikey! Is Guyon looking for a bonus? His interview smacks of desperation. Fortunately Jacinda was able to make him sound just that. DESPARATE. She treated him like the bad mannered child that he is and he achieved absolutely nothing with his hectoring,bullying attitude. Maybe he should try a measured professional approach and he might get taken seriously. An excellent, sensible calm and clear attitude from Jacinda with her replies was wonderful to hear. At least one adult in the conversation! Guyon is past his used by date.
Was Guyon ever that “persistent” with Key?
Don’t remember him being so. Guyon was grateful that Key would allow a very sparse minute just before the 8 o’clock news and treated him gently in case he didn’t turn up at all.
Of course he was as persistent with Key and English. You just can’t remember because you obviously thought that any persistent questioning of Key/English was justified as a result of your political bias.
Totally agree. Guyon Espinor is a hectoring bore. I am tired of his style of interviewing. He’s more suited to Fox News.
And as for John Key – for years he refused to be interviewed on Morning Report.
If President Trump gets a good poll bump from the results of this North Korean summit he will be sending a strong signal to Romney and the traditional conservative Republican wing that there is only one Republican nomination for the next Presidential contest – and it’s him.
If the Dems don’t get their house sorted in pretty quick order instead of folding and undercutting each other like they did in the banking reforms, then they will be very hard pressed to beat Trump.
The rest might be a bit too far into the future, but Trump’s massive strength of perpetual chaos, drama, and through that total name-domination in the media is sustaining a very strong base to build from.
@ffloyd….agreed. I loved both Little and Jacinda taking it to Espiner this morning on Morning Report-well worth a listen to anyone who hasn’t heard it.
Both showed themselves to be smart and on top of the issue. I’m still reveling in this government after 9 years of hell.
Our future trade focus should be Asia and we should be part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, hanging off the USA’s coat tails is not going to do us any good in the future, the future trade growth region is Asia.
It’s better to trade with countries that make different stuff. Korea makes real steel and computers, and does not compete with our ag goods. The US, with its weird corn subsidies and mad cow disease doesn’t want our stuff.
Korea makes real steel and computers, and does not compete with our ag goods.
We make steel. Around 1.5 million tonnes of it per year. We export around 1 million tonnes of it. And that doesn’t even take into account all the raw iron sand that we export.
The problem with that scenario is that we will, quite rapidly, run out of iron deposits.
Our focus on farming is depleting our soils as well poisoning our waterways. So, that’s not sustainable either.
Electronics tend to made out of silicon and doping with semi-conductors. We have significant deposits of both of those as well. So, we could easily make our own electronics from our own resources. Just need to develop those deposits and build the factories. Do that and buying our own would be cheaper than importing due to distance and transport costs.
The US, with its weird corn subsidies and mad cow disease doesn’t want our stuff.
Our main agricultural export ATM seems to be dairy. The US is massively over-producing dairy to the point where their farmers are losing money on sale of it. In other words, even if we had an FTA with the US, we wouldn’t be able to export there simply because they can provide it themselves cheaper. And once they get that over-production sorted it’ll still be cheaper to buy US produced milk in the US than to buy NZ milk in the US.
An export led economy is doomed due to the very real physical limitations of available resources.
An economy that uses it’s own resources and recycles them is actually sustainable due to the resources always being available.
In other words, reality makes trade unsustainable.
God. Who gave Armstrong the kiss of life. ANOTHER opinion piece on his intimate knowledge of Jacindas state of mind, this time on Andrew Littles 3strike postponement. Definitely on a Labour sabotage mission.
Is Armstrong working as a psychologist now, just wait till after the baby is born and the post natal depresssion kicks in, Guyon, Richardson, Garner and Armstrong will have a fieldday ?
Armstrong is a devious National Party shill (as opposed to a journalist).
He lost all credibility as a commentator when he demanded Cunliffe’s resignation over a meaningless 10 year old letter. He later admitted he was wrong to do this, but of course he knew that at the time.
Justice! Fair play! Good for Nicky and for future police action. Though it still doesn’t explain why the police were so active for Slater.
“Investigative journalist Nicky Hager has accepted a police apology and payment of “substantial damages” following the unlawful search of his home during the investigation into the hacking that led to the Dirty Politics book.”
Just listening to K Ryan talking to someone? regarding the meeting between dumb and dumber. He says it is just a publicity exercise and won’t achieve anything. Does this mean it will be all about ‘summit and nowt?
“Ms Berryman is commencing immediately with the initial focus of her investigation on the Young Labour camp in February. The review is expected to take between two and three months,” said Nigel Haworth, Labour Party President.
Why should expect to hear anything? t has nothing to do with you. It was a purely internal matter for the Labour Party.
However I will tell you the gist of the enquiry.
Nothing happened.
The stories about it were all fabrications by lying members of neo-Nazi organisations like the National Party.
There were no members of the Party at the affair.
The people who were there all went to bed early and no one saw or heard anything.
The only problems were caused by fifth columnists from the National Party and other Fascist organisations.
But nothing happened.
Nothing further will be said.
It is time to move on.
But nothing happened.
There. I think you would agree that is a pretty fair summary of the matter.
Hopefully the IRD will do an audit on John Key’s affairs and determine whether he paid tax on the NZRail shares which he failed to disclose to the NZ Public, as he may have bought those shares with the intention of selling them (ie speculation) as he was definitely not a long term investor in NZRail, similar to one of the other major shareholders Fay Richwhite ?
I’d like to think that those in power should have automatic audits to make sure they are not profiting from their power. In particular due to the rise of the super rich to being in politics, aka financial trader makes PM aka KEY, the property developer/reality TV star make President aka Trump, the lawyer who makes his own laws aka Rodrigo Duterte…
But the trouble is that interviews aren’t as useful as employers think. Indeed, organizations can still make great (and arguably better) hiring decisions without them. What would happen if we all agreed to scrap job interviews tomorrow, and focused instead on other indicators of career potential? Unthinkable as it may sound, there are at least three important data points that suggest replacing interviews with other, more predictive measures is the way to go.
Most of the attributes interviewers try to evaluate by gut feel–a candidate’s competencies, skills, personality, values, “culture fit,” and so on–are more rigorously inferred from other data like resumes, simulations, tests, and past performance ratings. Interviews certainly create opportunities for candidates to make claims about these qualities, but as I argue in my latest book, there’s little reason to believe them. Indeed, there’s not much overlap between the talents people say they have and the ones they actually possess. (Plus, interviewers often use the idea of “good culture fit” to justify hiring people from their own in-groups.)
In fact, so-called “dark side” personality traits, such as narcissism and psychopathy, are found among people with otherwise strong social skills, at least in short-term interactions, which makes them perform rather well on interviews. In that sense, interviews are just like a first date: Just because someone charms you the first time you meet them doesn’t mean you should marry them. The regrettable fact is that there are parasitic people in just about every organization–those who climb the ladder while sucking up resources and taking credit for others’ work, all at the expense of strong performers who go unrecognized and stagnate in their careers. De-emphasizing job interviews–or ditching them completely–might help alleviate this this problem.
I’m sure that there are many managers and business owners who think that they’re great at interviews and yet are probably the most biased and make the worst mistakes because of that bias while they hire people just like them.
You have to wonder how a $6000 fine is going to deter employers after a 3.5 year breach of employing an illegal worker and not paying taxes and of course this is a person who is sponsoring in migrant workers too, for a liquor store.
If you calculate how much is being lost in each case, 3.5 years of someone else not getting a job, the police costs to prosecute, the deportation costs and the justice system and then the guy just gets a fine of $6000 and the loss of business to other stores who employ legal workers paying taxes! Crime sure does pay in this country!
Weird that you can’t get somebody who needs a job locally to work at his store and how the government keeps bringing in low wage workers at the drop of a hat and the government doesn’t understand why poverty is increasing.
Apparently over 60% of people who end up in prison are unemployed… maybe have a think about, rather than building more prisons and having 3 strikes laws and work for dole schemes – actually employ our own citizens in real jobs at 40 hours a week so that they don’t need to turn to crime!
There is no longer an equal playing field in this country both for businesses and workers because there has become a culture of paying for for a fake job to get residency, underpaying for a job or having illegal workers paying no taxes taking jobs.
Even the sex workers are fed up with the illegal workers coming in on student and tourist visas!
You can’t run a country with less and less people paying taxes and ignoring the problem of fake jobs and illegal workers!
Start with the criminal employers who are not paying taxes, probably collecting many benefits like AS and WFF and creating these Ponzi schemes buying up more small and medium businesses and perpetuating the growing problems for other legitimate businesses and workers.
They can’t read well enough, for example, to be able to get a driver’s licence because they can’t do the written tests.
They can’t get a job in today’s society because they can’t read.
When I was young I used to spend the University Summer break working in Wool Stores. You could get a job like that even if you could barely read or write. Being able to pick out the right numbers on the stencil when marking the weight was pretty much all you needed to be able to do.
Those sort of jobs simply don’t exist any more, but there are still people who can’t read well enough to do anything else. That is what is the best thing we can do to get people into jobs and out of prison.
I’m not saying that that is the only reason why this firm doesn’t hire locals. There are always ratbags who will hire immigrants at illegally low wages. It is however indicative of why there are people who can’t get jobs and just drift from one jail sentence to another.
My personal opinion is that the schools should make their absolute priority getting people up to a minimum level of literacy and numeracy before they worry about anything else at all. Cultural topics can wait. If you can’t read you can’t learn anything else anyway.
Agree literacy in prisons is a problem aka anyone illiterate should all be doing the primary school syllabus while in prison. I’m not talking about dinky little online courses, I think there should be full on schools in prisons for the inmates with one teacher per 20 inmates for example.
However once they get out of prison they should have an opportunity to get a job or even better not go to prison because they got a job when they left school/tertiary in the first place…
But my link was about an illegal worker working in a liquor store, I don’t think you need high literacy for that, in fact they seem to use symbols now on tills for products and the tills do all the calculations for the cash customers. So I think that illegal workers are a bad idea, we are just getting worse and worse in NZ, encouraging poor work practises with pathetic sentences and encouraging more of the same.
To give an example the guy who poached some Paua got 12 months in prison, his dive gear confiscated and not allowed to fish for 3 years. Someone who sent a hoax note to Fonterra got 8 years in prison. Grow a bit of cannabis and you could lose your house!
But poor working practises from employers, if they even get caught, actually seem to have a fine below what they made by their illegal actions!
The law should be banning employers caught hiring illegal workers from owning/managing a business for 3 years, let alone allow them to bring more people in as well as a fine of $100,000. They should also have IRD doing full audits to see if any suspicious payments are being made (aka bribes for jobs) and check if they are compliant in other tax matters.
The point is, people need to be doing something if they are unemployed and getting $150 p/w on the dole aint a good prospect and even worse ‘work for the dole at $150’, and a $600 p/w job in a liquor store, although not great, is better than nothing!
So if we are getting employers owning multiple businesses who have people paying for the job, working illegally or getting $2p/h (and there are many cases occurring of that), then it’s cutting someone else’s prospects down to get that job or someone else operating a business that operates within NZ law.
I’m sorry to have derailed your comments with my pet hobby horse.
I got distracted by the comment about prisoners having been unemployed.
Having people who are literate isn’t going to help very much with employers like the one in the case you quote of course. They employ people who will work for very little because otherwise they get deported.
The only real way to deal with such employers is to belt them with truly massive fines. Fines so high that it simply isn’t worth them offending. Then pay at least some of the money out to the people who were employed illegally or on less than the minimum wage. Treat their wealth as being like the money seized from the gangs. It is proceeds of a crime and should be forfeited.
On a different subject I would allow the employment of people who simply cannot produce enough to justify them having to be paid the minimum wage. There used to be sheltered workshops for such people. Sure they were paid very little. It did however give them something they could do. Make their living costs up with a benefit from the state.
alwyn, I would put it to you that the minimum wage is now so low that it is the equivalent of a sheltered workshop wage.
How desperate would you have to be to do hard, physically hurtful labour like picking Kiwifruit for possibly less than $15 an hour? (They jiggle it by paying by the basket, I believe.)
Be honest.
Well, to be honest your first statement is simply wrong.
If you compare the minimum wage to the median wage for a full time worker New Zealand has a very high ratio when compared to similar countries. In 2016, according to the OECD the ratios for a few selected countries was
New Zealand 0.61
Australia 0.54
Germany 0.47
France 0.61
USA 0.35
Canada 0.46
UK 0.41
The numbers for lots of other countries are here. https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=MIN2AVE
I would fail to see how that can be described as “low”.
It is also much greater than would have been a typical wage in a sheltered workshop. They were, until the were forced out of existence by the Clark Government something like a couple of dollars/hour.
The workers didn’t live of that of course. They, or their families got benefits. It gave the people involved something to do each day and gave some meaning to their life.
Would I like to do something like Kiwifruit picking? At my age and physical condition of course not. When I was younger I quite happily spent about 3 months each year labouring and enjoyed it. It is amazing how much muscle you can put on in a few months when away from the student life.
I can’t really discuss the topic with you unless you see that your beliefs about minimum wages in this country are simply wrong, can I?
How can 50% of prisoners be illiterate surely they went to school until they were 15 years old, I thought we had a good education system or have we had teachers just f’ing around ? Sounds like B/S to me ?
@Tamati Tautuhi, sadly I think it is true, I have heard similar, sadly the result of Rogernomics and our ‘new’ educational systems like Tomorrow’s Schools where schools are run more like businesses. Personally I’d like to see our school principals have a more education focus, nowadays they are more like administration managers working our asset depreciation and infrastructure maintenance budgets… because in the old days the ministry took care of all that but now it’s up to the individual schools the burden often falling on principals… which has encouraged a certain type of principal more on the economic side than the educational side..
Of course in the business world, you have a CEO, CIO, CFO and CTO… but school principals are expected to do all that in one role, plus be the educational leaders..and of course the health and safety side.
Quite frankly it’s lucky we even get the results we do get with the weird ideas that have come about. The casualties are the kids who are failing 30% and the syllabus not getting every kid through.
It’s also not just for people who are going the criminal route that these jobs are useful for, I know people with intellectual disabilities who are all working in places like Supermarkets, or people who work in hospitality because they have other issues. The people I know are good workers who have been working for nearly a decade in that type of job. But they are being replaced and forced out of the work force by a growing issue of imported low wage workers, who as well as taking out jobs need more hospitals/schools/roads/houses.
So not only are people at the bottom facing job pressure, they also now have more competition for getting a house to rent and the rest of the country are subsidising these employers who are increasing at an alarming pace around the country. It used to just be Auckland, no more it’s spreading everywhere.
Likewise the quality of tourist experience. Stayed at a formally upmarket hotel taken over by an overseas firm who are buying up hotels around the country. If hardly any staff members, stinky minibar, dirty bathroom, un maintained rooms with bits falling off door, and rat bait packages under the bed in a resort that used to be luxury stay, sound like a good tourist experience, welcome to the ‘new’ New Zealand experience…
@Tamati. I can’t confirm the numbers but I am certainly willing to believe Mike’s comments. Did you read the article at that link?
I once tutored someone in one of our Prisons. That was about 40 years ago. He was, I think, in for selling drugs and he was doing part-time University courses at Massey. Definitely an odd one out. He said that many inmates couldn’t read and he would read their letters to them.
There have always been people like that. It isn’t a new thing or something that Tomorrow’s Schools caused. It just didn’t matter so much when there were lots of manual labour jobs available. When I was at High School we had a lot (around 20%) who arrived at the school for the third form at age 13 who really could not read or write. There were a couple of teachers who spent nearly all their time teaching them to read. You see without that skill they couldn’t learn anything else. Once they had, if ever, achieved that skill they could learn other things.
That was about 60 years ago. At least, as I suggested, in those days you could find work with very low skills. Now you can’t. In fact you may not even be able to get to work if you can’t drive.
If you don’t get the hang of reading early on at school I have been told you will withdraw from learning. You know you aren’t as good as other kids but you don’t want to admit it or to show up as being behind. So you say nothing. Then you stop attending school and things just never improve.
And no, it isn’t just “teachers f”ing off” as you put it. Kids missing school because they can’t keep up can’t be helped if they aren’t there.
On the other hand I think there are far too many things in the curriculum that could be ignored as long as this skill isn’t there. It might be a good thing to learn about all sorts of topics but they should be left until the three R’s are at some minimal level.
Good comment, alwyn (just for a change..)
Some time ago during my time as a teacher of languages I remember a very interesting lecture/article by some linguistic guru who claimed by some research or stats or who-knows-what that even in the best utopian country with the finest possible education system, a minimum of 8% (it could have been 1 in 8) in any population will inevitably remain functionally illiterate.
It is just the way humans are born.
So while some prisoners may be capable of becoming literate, it may well be that many will remain the way they are despite our efforts.
To my mind we need to reinstitute well-paid jobs for such people.
My surprising choice for an example of such nature is – rubbish collection!
In the good old days: a gang of 5 or so people with one truck. One drives; one or two stand up on rear, catch the bins lifted or thrown upwards to them, empty the bin into the truck, then toss the empty bin back down to the several runners, who place it back on the footpath upside-down. (A popular member of the old Waikato Rugby team used to do that job because it helped him keep fit for rugby.)
A radio would be blaring pop music on the back of the truck, the guys would be calling out to one another (including to driver) to maintain coordinated effort.
My toddler daughter would hear the parade coming, rush to the front window: the guys on the back of the truck used to look out for this, and would wave and grin, causing little toddler to wave back energetically. They seemed to love waving to little kids. They were cheerful enough to smile!
Lamentably, there is no such thing any more. Automated trucks, max of two people; no music; one might get fit by stepping on and off running board to toss bags (PLASTIC!!) of rubbish into the rear… The worst I saw was in Auckland where one sad-looking guy drove the truck that had mechanised arms to pick up wheely-bins and replace them (emptied out) back on the footpath. He looked bloody miserable. Probably paid far less than those earlier guys.
This disaster must apply to many other jobs as well. Fewer people less happy, being paid less money. I would not have minded working with those guys back when I was young. I would hate to work in modern rubbish collection.
This is how the Market leads us to bad places: mechanisation that is not well-guided is the enemy of human society. (The Luddites were right!)
The economy makes a good servant to society, but a very poor master.
And we have RWNJs still stupid enough to want the economy and the market to rule….
So weird though that although those jobs are apparently going, NZ seems to have so many ‘unskilled’ jobs on it’s ‘skilled’ migrant list… our productivity has been stagnant for years and our migrants are even lower qualified and less skilled than 5 years ago and so many lobby groups jumping up and down about how there are so many shortages of labour because apparently Kiwis are not suitable anymore. What a strategy for the future, sarc.
Posted an article a few days ago where an offshore hotel being built wanted 100’s of workers bought into Auckland on $20 p/h as decorators.
$20 p/h was the rate for a painter/decorater about 28 years ago!!! There are plenty of painter/decorators in Northland, but do you really think it is worth someone’s while to come to Auckland for a pay rate that comes from circa 1990 and is impossible to live on once you have a family ????
How the fuck can local construction survive when you are getting this under cutting?
Careful, dear alwyn – you have almost agreed with me.
What is the way ahead? They say that further automation is going to cut even more jobs. Would a sensible society not be concerned to see that its members were usefully and reasonably happily occupied, and use automation only as required to meet those needs, and improve the economy without social damage??
Instead we have a greedy group who use automation to maximise their profits, without caring that they create one hell-hole of a society.
A recipe for massive disaster.
Your thoughts? (As The Chairman was so fond of demanding..)
Even better he is a “Polynesian Jew” playing Adolf Hitler, the imaginary friend of a young German lad whose mum is active in the Resistance (and Scarlett Johansson to boot!).
Simon No Bridges says Winston should concentrate on governing the country rather than taking out vendettas against Senior Government Officials and MP’s.
What the clown needs to realize is it is a separate issue to NZF, the Coalition or the governing of the country. These people deliberately released Winston’s personal information into the public arena, to smear him and influence the outcome of the 2017 General Election. Dirty Politics Paper 102
If people are not brought to account by the judicial system these things will keep happening.
We had blatant fraud and corruption with the collapse of the BNZ which was covered up by the NZ Government and the NZ Judiciary in the Winebox Enquiry. Hence we have systemic failures of companies here in NZ ever since then, as “white collar crime” is considered a legitimate business activity here in NZ. However stealing pinky bars from the local petrol station will get you locked up for a good length of time.
It sends a message to the crooks “if you are going to commit fraud here in NZ do it for a reasonable sum of money ? ” Doug Graham would be a classic case and example.
The Standard used to be, Worthwhile. But now that it is infested with Trolls it is so dull and childlike. It iooks and acts like a toddler with a dirty bottom.
Observer; The Standard is still worthwhile and then some. Those folk you “name” are our “creative tension providers” – without them, we are soft. Harden up, enjoy the creative stress!
You just have to scroll, or scribe past them, throw them the odd lure or live bait when you want a bit of entertainment, as it doesn’t take them long to come up the berley trail, just don’t feed them too much as they can chew up a lot of precious time and bait.
Report: We had good early activity by two trolls Gossie was up early and I am not sure who the other one was, today we have had good troll activity throughout the day, and it is highly likely we will get the Pick 6 today b4 12.00am, yesterday we didn’t get the last leg b4 12.00am but we got 5 legs in. So far today we have had activity from, Gossie, Mullet Head, James, Puckish Rogue & Baby Gaga. I will post the results later once we have analysed all the days trolling activity across T/S.
As I have suggested they should set up there own Blog Site and go all out, I guess they are over here undercover from Kiwi Blog & Whale Oil websites to keep themselves entertained ?
And how do we classify contributors? Who could decide whether a certain genuinely concerned Leftie (who often makes comments that look so) is in fact not what he seems?
Watched Question Time today. Bridges all geared up to smash Andrew Little but crashed out having to face Winston “On behalf Of the PM.”
Winston was at his best. Succinct. Amusing. And made Simon look like a very very silly little boy. Winston will be great as Acting PM.
Apologize to the ambulance service people it’s not like Eco Maori rings a ambulance every day. I was informed that the service is busy and the time was 40 min. The last time I had a ambulance rang was a hcoptter I did not wait I got my son to take me to hospital.
Ka kite ano
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In the spirit of Remember, remember the fifth of November, let's keep this in mind FOREVER.
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Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Racing Racing Minister Winston Peters met with Korea Racing Authority Chairperson Nak Soon Kim in Seoul today to discuss closer cooperation between the New Zealand and Korean horse racing industries. As part of the visit to the Seoul Racecourse, Mr Peters witnessed ...
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Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development Hon Nanaia Mahuta, Minister for Māori Development The three marae in the historic Parihaka Pa complex in Taranaki have been upgraded to high speed broadband with the support of the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF), Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “Connecting the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has announced further support as the Government of Samoa responds to a serious measles outbreak. “New Zealand will deploy a further 18 vaccination nurses, bringing the total to 30 working in Samoa over the next four weeks,” Mr Peters said. “A New Zealand Medical Assistance ...
Fa’atalofa atu, malo e lelei, Kia ora koutou katoa Thank you to the Child Poverty Action Group for asking me to be here today to provide an update on some of the things that have been happening across my the social development portfolio. Can I firstly acknowledge the vast ...
***Please check against delivery*** Good morning everyone. It is a pleasure to be with you this morning to open this year’s New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing Conference and AGM. Firstly, thank you Dr Alan Jackson, NZTR Chair for your introduction. And let us acknowledge also: The NZTR Board; Dean McKenzie, Chair ...
The Government has delivered on its promise to the over one million New Zealanders who now rent to make it fairer and more secure, Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing) Kris Faafoi has announced today. Both renters and landlords will benefit from the suite of practical changes to the Residential ...
A marine conservation milestone - the 20th anniversary of the establishment of Te Tapuwae o Rongokako Marine Reserve - is being celebrated today at a community event in Tairāwhiti/East Coast attended by the Minister of Conservation, Eugenie Sage. “The creation of this marine reserve in November 1999 was a game ...
The Government is asking the food industry to step up work to tackle obesity including reducing sugar, fat and salt in their products, better information for consumers, and tighter restrictions on advertising to children. Health Minister David Clark and Food Safety Minister Damien O’Connor have responded to a ...
ew, modern emergency department and outpatient facilities at Queenstown’s Lakes District Hospital mean better emergency care for the growing tourist mecca’s visitors and locals, says Health Minister David Clark. Today Dr Clark officially opened the hospital’s redeveloped Emergency Department and Outpatient facilities. The new facilities include: • An extended Emergency Department ...
Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter says today’s release of sexual and reproductive health data reinforces the significance of the Government’s commitment to providing free or very low-cost contraception. The Ministry of Health today published statistics from the Ministry of Health’s 2014/15 Health Survey. “It is important people can make ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced that at the request of the Samoan Government, New Zealand will be providing further support to Samoa as it faces a worsening measles outbreak. “In response to a request from the people of Samoa, New Zealand is providing 3000 measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) ...
“The new Disability Action Plan 2019–2023 moves us towards the inclusive and accessible New Zealand that this government has committed to,” Minister for Disability Issues Carmel Sepuloni announced today. “The Action Plan was designed by disabled people, their family and supporters, the disability sector and government agencies. It will ensure ...
Third Singapore-New Zealand Defence Ministers’ Meeting 14 November 2019 Joint Statement 1. Defence Ministers Ron Mark and Dr Ng Eng Hen today conducted their third annual Singapore-New Zealand Defence Ministers’ Meeting in Singapore. 2. Building on the Enhanced Partnership signed between both countries in May this year, this annual meeting ...
A Bill to improve the court system’s response to sexual violence has passed its first reading in Parliament today. Justice Minister Andrew Little says the Sexual Violence Legislation Bill will reduce the trauma sexual violence complainants experience in court, while maintaining defendants’ fundamental rights and making sure the trial process ...
Streamlined payment practices are a step closer for Kiwi businesses with the formal launch of New Zealand’s e-Invoicing framework. Small Business Minister Stuart Nash says the government has now established the structure to enable automated and direct data exchange between the accounting systems of buyers and sellers. “The move to ...
Another 51 quarantine officers and four new biosecurity detector dog teams will help protect New Zealand from invasive pests and diseases this summer, says Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor. “The Government is delivering on its commitment to strengthen New Zealand’s biosecurity system and support our valuable primary sector “New Zealand’s flora, fauna ...
A new report has found New Zealand’s space sector contributed $1.69 billion to the economy in the last financial year and employs 12,000 people, Minister for Economic Development Phil Twyford announced today. The report by Deloitte was commissioned by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and shows New Zealand ...
Judge Coral Shaw has been appointed as the new Chair of the Royal Commission into Historical Abuse in State Care and in the Care of Faith-based Institutions, Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin announced today. "Judge Shaw, who is currently one of the inquiry commissioners, is extremely well qualified for the ...
The Government has confirmed its third major mental health facility upgrade since the Budget, this time at Palmerston North Hospital. The Prime Minister and Health Minister today visited MidCentral DHB to announce that $30 million has been allocated to upgrade its acute mental health facility. It follows earlier announcements in ...
The roll out of the National Bowel Screening Programme has reached the halfway mark, with 10 out of 20 District Health Boards now part of the programme. MidCentral DHB, which covers Palmerston North, Manawatu and surrounding districts, this week became the latest to DHB to offer free bowel screening to ...
The Government welcomes PHARMAC’s decision to fund a vaccine to protect young people from meningococcal disease from 1 December this year. “Meningococcal disease is a serious threat which people at higher risk should be protected from,” says Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter. “The combined pharmaceutical budget was increased by ...
Groups involved with innovative fisheries research projects are encouraged to apply for government support in the latest funding round from the Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures programme. Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash says the SFF Futures funding is designed to be flexible enough to support small or large projects across a ...
The Government has fixed an issue affecting how Immigration New Zealand has processed visa applications for culturally arranged marriages, which will now see a consistent process applied which ensures people with legitimate arranged marriages can visit New Zealand while also preventing any rorting of the system. Earlier this year Immigration ...
The Royal Commission into the Attacks on Christchurch Mosques will report back on 30 April 2020 to give it more time to hear submissions and consider information, Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin announced today. The Royal Commission was originally scheduled to report back to Government by 10 December 2019. “There has ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Washington DC today to attend a ministerial meeting focused on defeating ISIS, and to continue pursuing New Zealand’s trade opportunities. Mr Peters will participate in a meeting of Foreign and Defence Ministers from key countries contributing to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. ...
The recently crowned Bird of the Year, the hoiho/yellow eyed penguin, is getting a much needed helping hand alongside more than 168 other community conservation projects announced Minister for Conservation Eugenie Sage today. 168 community conservation projects throughout New Zealand are benefiting from $8 million in government grants, including $500,000 ...
Controls on assault rifles and semi-automatic firearms are to be broadened to include some types of pistols, under changes to a bill currently making its way through Parliament. Police Minister Stuart Nash has tabled a Supplementary Order Paper to the Arms Legislation Bill, which is currently before a Select Committee ...
Minister of Defence Ron Mark will travel to Singapore today to conduct a counterpart visit and to co-chair the third annual Singapore-New Zealand Defence Ministers’ Meeting with his counterpart, Minister for Defence Dr Ng Eng Hen. “Singapore is one of our most important defence partners in the region, and our ...
Nelson’s Salisbury School is to be rebuilt, creating a modern and suitable learning environment for students at the residential special school, Education Minister Chris Hipkins and Associate Education Minister Tracey Martin announced today. The school for girls aged 8-15, in Richmond, was earmarked for closure by National until the process ...
The panel undertaking a comprehensive review of the Resource Management Act has identified the main issues to be addressed and options for reform and is calling for feedback to inform its final report. In July the Government announced the comprehensive review of the resource management system, including the RMA - ...
An important safety valve has been added to New Zealand’s criminal justice system with the third reading of the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill today. The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) will investigate claimed miscarriages of justice. “We’ve seen how our justice system can very occasionally get things spectacularly wrong, ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters welcomes the tabling of the Racing Industry Transition Agency (RITA) 2019 Annual Report in Parliament today. He says the 2019 Annual Report marks the point when New Zealand’s racing industry’s decline was arrested and a turnaround started. RITA’s 2019 Annual Report recorded an industry net profit ...
The New Zealand Government is today sending 21 firefighters to help fight the ongoing catastrophic Australian bushfires. “The fires in Australia are in some of the toughest, most challenging conditions ever,” says Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin. “As of yesterday morning, there were 100 active bushfire-related incidents across Queensland and ...
More frontline support for schools through a new education agency, as part of a redesigned Ministry of Education More support for principals and school boards including through a new centre of leadership and local leadership advisor roles New independent disputes panels for parents and students Management of school property ...
The Government’s reform of the Tomorrow’s Schools system is a watershed moment in education and an opportunity to create meaningful change for ākonga Māori and their whānau, Associate Education Minister Kelvin Davis said today. “Last year through Kōrero Mātauranga | Education Conversation, Māori teachers, parents, ākonga, whānau, hapū and iwi ...
Infrastructure Minister is welcoming the first of many updated project pipelines from the newly established New Zealand Infrastructure Commission today. The New Zealand Infrastructure Commission, Te Waihanga, has released an expanded pipeline of major capital projects – another crucial step towards delivering better infrastructure outcomes. “The first iteration of the ...
Tougher gun laws designed to improve public safety through firearms prohibition orders are proposed in a new document released for public input. Police Minister Stuart Nash says firearms prohibition orders (FPOs) would give new powers to Police to ensure high-risk individuals come nowhere near firearms. “We have already prohibited the ...
Andy Coupe has been confirmed as TVNZ’s new Board Chair. “Mr Coupe has strong commercial and capital markets experience and TVNZ has benefited from his technical knowledge of business and finance, as well as his extensive governance experience,” the Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media Kris Faafoi said. Andy ...
Associate Minister of Transport Julie Anne Genter today officially opened a separated pathway, following the completion of the Kaiwharawhara Stream bridge, which will improve safety for cyclists and pedestrians along Hutt Road. The $6.8m Hutt Road project provides a separated path for cycling and pedestrians, the replacement of informal parking ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today announced the appointment of career diplomat Si’alei van Toor as New Zealand’s next Ambassador to Russia. “I’m pleased to appoint Ms van Toor to this position. She brings a wealth of experience to the role having previously served as Senior Trade Adviser to the ...
The Treasury’s 2019 Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU) will be released on Wednesday December 11, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. The Coalition Government will publish the 2020 Budget Policy Statement at the same time, outlining the priorities for Budget 2020. Further details on arrangements for the release will ...
A new initiative to better support small businesses through hands-on mentoring and advice has been launched by the Minister for Small Business. The first event in the Kiwi Business Boost series of regional workshops and online tools has been launched in Wairoa by Stuart Nash. “The Business Boost initiative combines ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Lilburn, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Melbourne You’re driving down an unfamiliar street on a clear spring evening. You’ve been invited to a friend of a friend’s party, at a house you’ve never been to before. Tracking the street numbers, you ...
Crimestoppers New Zealand launched its updated website www.crimestoppers-nz.org today. As well as catering for traditional anonymous reports the site now supports mobile users and allows files and images to be attached. The changes support people of all ...
Prince Andrew has spoken for the first time in public about his friendship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. What did he say to create such a media storm, and how did he get into this mess in the first place? First thing’s first: who is Prince Andrew? Prince Andrew, Duke ...
Sam Brooks interviews the three guest curators of the New Zealand Festival of Arts: Bret McKenzie, Laurie Anderson and Lemi Ponifasio.An Oscar-winning Conchord, the world’s most beloved multimedia artist, and a world-renowned director and choreographer with an attitude. Three weeks, three unique visions of what a festival can and should ...
Plans are being put in place to increase methyl bromide monitoring following a theoretical modelling report about how the log fumigant disperses into the environment after use. ...
It’s the most beautiful time of the year! Comedian Sera Devcich joins Emily Writes to share the joy and investigate the top 10 toys your ungrateful kids will want this Christmas.It’s November which means it’s officially time for your kids to start bugging you day in and day out about ...
Proposed changes to tenancy rights are trickle down, not transformational, change says the Manawatu Tenants’ Union (MTU). There are however improvements for renters, and these efforts must be commended according to the MTU. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Stokes, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Deakin University “To be dead,” wrote the 20th century French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, “is to be a prey for the living.” Even Sartre, though, would have struggled to imagine casting James Dean in a movie 64 ...
The Good Citizen podcast focuses on the way good design – and good people – can change cities for the better. In this episode, Jeremy Hansen talks to architect Richard Goldie about his bold idea for a partially submerged stadium on Auckland’s waterfront, a project that’s now a finalist in ...
Former prime minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer QC has published two books with Andrew Butler calling for a written, codified constitution that sets out ‘in an accessible form and a single document the fundamental rules and principles under which New Zealand is to be governed’. A road trip and consultation attracted ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s content by Dr Bryce Edwards.Housing Luke Malpass and Henry Cooke (Stuff): Government hikes claims thresholds for bad landlords, increases ...
People with intellectual disabilities and their families are struggling to access support more than ever before, as the disability sector faces a now $574 million annual funding shortfall, says IHC. ...
The Labour-led coalition may have to generate a second wave of Jacindamania if it is to win another term in the Beehive. Re-election is not an impossible dream, despite the failure of Labour to deliver what many of those who voted for it in 2017 expected. Retiring Green MP Gareth Hughes ...
A corporate undertaker talks top tips for making sure you get paid, reining in rogue liquidators, and having a heart for those who’ve lost money.PwC’s John Fisk has handled high profile company failures from Pike River to Lombard Finance and the Ross Asset Management Ponzi scheme. He also chairs the ...
Armed police represent a serious cause for concern, especially for the most vulnerable, writes the chief executive of the Mental Health Foundation.The Mental Health Foundation has publicly condemned the police trial of special armed response teams patrolling three districts around New Zealand. We’re extremely worried these trials will result in ...
International crime rings are increasingly targeting New Zealanders’ bank accounts to launder proceeds from scams and fraud. Bronwyn Groot, Fraud Education Manager at the Commission for Financial Capability (CFFC) is highlighting the rising incidence ...
A just-released report shows that the food industry wants to stay in a business-as-usual mode with a few minor tweaks around the edges. In response, the New Zealand Government appeared comfortable with that approach, and provided no Government plans for comprehensive ...
New Zealand consumers will be left in the dark about foods grown in Australia that have been created using gene editing techniques. On the 13 November the Australian Senator Rice put up a motion to disallow, or overturn, the recently passed Gene Technology ...
As Aotearoa plans for festive season celebrations, The Salvation Army is preparing to make its house a home to hundreds of men, women and children who have nowhere else to stay. ...
Landlords say they feel under siege with the government planning to make it tougher for them to boot out troublesome tenants; and skilled immigrants waiting for a residents visa say its unfair officials are fast tracking applications for those on salaries over $105,000. ...
Standing with the farmers, New Conservative is committed to pushing back against the lunacy of the ETS and Carbon Zero commitments by this government. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tomas Trescak, Senior Lecturer in Intelligent Systems, Western Sydney University Just a few years ago, virtual reality (VR) was being showered with very real money. The industry raised an estimated US$900 million in venture capital in 2016, but by 2018 that figure ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rowena Maguire, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Institute for Future Environments, Queensland University of Technology Over the past two weeks, bushfires have raged across New South Wales and Queensland. While the narrative appears focused on potential causes and political point-scoring, what’s lost ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Davis, Chair of Women’s Health, Monash University At menopause, a woman’s ovaries lose their reproductive function. Eggs are no longer released and the production of the hormones oestrogen and progesterone falls. It’s the lowered levels of oestrogen after menopause that gives ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julian Bolleter, Deputy Director, Australian Urban Design Research Centre, University of Western Australia Around the world, the vast majority of people are flocking to cities not to dwell in their centres but to live in the new suburbs expanding their outer limits. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Natalya Saldanha, Academic, RMIT University Like any eight-year-old, Ryan Kaji loves to play with toys. But when Ryan plays, millions watch. Since the age of four he’s been the star of his own YouTube channel. All up his videos have gained ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kieran Wong, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, Monash University Indigenous voices are finally being acknowledged as important voices in Australian galleries and museums. Since 2014, I have worked as an advisor to Western Australia’s New Museum, a A$450 million project and one of ...
Retiring Green MP Gareth Hughes says the pace of change in the current Government is not fast enough for his liking but that is not the reason he is quitting politics. ...
The Superdiversity Institute for Law, Policy and Business is releasing its latest report today on Culturally, ethnically and linguistically diverse parties in the Courts: A Chinese case study . The Report’s author, Mai Chen, Chair of the Superdiversity ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Doubts emerge about Auckland port move, NZDF leaves death-causing material behind in Afghanistan, and laws around renting to be shaken up.Over the last week, the ramifications of moving most of the operations of Auckland’s port north to Whangarei have been ...
An ambitious new partnership between Sky Sports and more than 50 sports promises more free sport for Kiwis. Suzanne McFadden looks at how it will change the way we see female athletes ...
Catriona MacLennan helped conduct a survey of the top NZ companies to establish the ethnicity of their directors. The results were not surprising, but also far from encouraging. ...
Episode 1 in a series on the trials of injured animals as they’re rescued, rehabilitated and released back into the wild follows the rescue of a yellow-eyed penguin. ...
New Zealand Defence Force's failed to clean up properly after itself in Afghanistan - with the result that seven children have been killed and another 10 civilians injured. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Chinese embassy has lashed out at two Liberal members of parliament, Andrew Hastie and James Paterson, saying they would need to “repent and redress their mistakes” before they would be welcome in China. The ...
Tim Costley National’s new candidate in Otaki Local party members have selected Tim Costley as National’s candidate in Ōtaki for the 2020 General Election. Mr Costley is replacing retiring MP Nathan Guy, who is standing down after five terms. ...
“Compelling research out of the UK reaffirms vaping’s life-saving role. Here’s hoping our Government’s pending legislation reflects vaping’s increasingly documented health benefits for smokers,” say Ben Pryor, co-owner of the largest Kiwi-owned ...
Government has announced a raft of changes to the Residential Tenancies Act. The Minister has said he does not want to be seen to unduly punishing landlords. These changes do more than punish landlords however. They will punish anyone living next ...
Democracy under Fire on Firearms Law Reform - COLFO SUNDAY 17 NOVEMBER 2019 The Government supposedly wants to “hear from all New Zealanders” about firearms law reform – unless you happen to be a licenced firearms owner. ...
From Monday 18 November New Zealand women are working for free until the end of the year because of the gender pay imbalance between men and women. ...
Award-winning investigative team Stuff Circuit is releasing its most hard-hitting documentary yet, exposing a secret the NZ Defence Force doesn’t want Kiwis to know. ...
The government has announced a suite of practical changes to the Residential Tenancies Act in its bid to make renting fairer and more secure. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happening?A number of changes to the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA) has just been announced by associate minister of housing Kris ...
US Trumpian Inspired Rhetoric From Anti-Trans Group Not a Good Fit with Nz Society Trans-rights support groups around the country have been dismayed by recent divisive and repellent comments by Stand Up For Women (SUFW), a group calling itself feminist ...
Sam Brooks reviews the third season of The Crown, a show that can’t decide whether it wants to humanise the monarchy or tear it all down.This review contains very mild spoilers for world history, 1964-1977.Three seasons in, there’s no doubt that The Crown is the, well, crown jewel in Netflix’s ...
An easy, flavour-packed noodle recipe from Bounty – Cooking With Vegetables, the new cookbook from national food education charity the Garden to Table Trust.The fresh flavours of these noodles are less complex than many Thai dishes, as the simple spice paste uses just a few ingredients. If you’d rather not ...
Part 2: In this excerpt from the evidence of Sir Maarten Wevers in the High Court case of Winston Peters over his superannuation leak, the former head of the Prime Minister's Department explains what ministers should be told by public servants ...
In this excerpt from the evidence of Sir Maarten Wevers in the High Court case of Winston Peters over his superannuation leak, the former head of the Prime Minister's Department summarises our governing arrangements. ...
With the 2020 cannabis referendum fast approaching, New Zealanders have a unique opportunity to let the government know what they want from drug reform. It will then be up to our policy makers to decide whether drug reform will focus on changing outcomes for those struggling under historically racist policy.By ...
It breaks my heart to think of young queer and trans people seeing this sign, and thinking there are no spaces where they will ever belong, writes Hadassah Grace. The first time I ventured into a gay bar, I vowed never to go back.It was a vulnerable time in my life. ...
It breaks my heart to think of young queer and trans people seeing this sign, and thinking there are no spaces where they will ever belong, writes Hadassah Grace. The first time I ventured into a gay bar, I vowed never to go back.It was a vulnerable time in my life. ...
Hayden Donnell looks for inspiration and innovation on how to house the city’s future.Auckland Council’s Unitary Plan has enabled a building boom. More than 14,600 building consents were issued in the city in the year to September. Despite that, houses remain extremely expensive and out-of-reach for many first home buyers. ...
Simon Shepherd: David Seymour's euthanasia bill passed this week, and next week he will be putting the finishing touches on his next bill. Is he just a very hard-working politician or is this the longest one-person election campaign known to mankind? ...
Simon Shepherd: It's Transgender Awareness Week, the same week a feminist group, Speak Up For Women, has brought Megan Murphy from Canada to speak in New Zealand. Murphy is a radical feminist who believes trans women aren't women, views that have ...
As a follow-up to our post about police station office hours for the public and in the cause of balance, we bring positive news – or rather, we are passing on the positive news which the police delivered in a press statement, It’s all about the productivity gains achieved – it ...
Books editor Catherine Woulfe follows Wellington author Lawrence Patchett into his extraordinary story of heat and humanity and history repeating. The Burning River begins like the best kind of yarn. “Someone had been there. Someone strange. In the centre of his camp, a new circle of sooted rocks. A campfire, with ...
SPECIAL REPORT: By Philip Cass in BrisbaneMelanesian Media Freedom Forum – Day two –The second day of the Melanesian Media Freedom Forum began with praise for the work of young Pacific journalists by Professor David Robie and ended with a warning that threats to journalism in the ...
In this special episode of The Real Pod, brought to you by Nando’s, we chat to the champions of My Restaurant Rules NZ 2019.In the afterglow of Rustic Kitchen’s historic win on My Restaurant Rules NZ, Duncan and Alex got on the blower with Tyson and Denise. Then we forgot ...
Hannah Kronast attends a women’s empowerment panel focused on the huge disparities in training and employment within science and technology. In the far back left-hand corner of a women’s equality and empowerment event, a male stuck up his hand. “What can men do to help?” he asked.It was at a panel ...
Our recent Spinoff Art survey provided a snapshot on gender equality in the local art scene, but it wasn’t the full story. Anna Knox continues the conversation by asking some gallery owners and directors for their responses to our findings.The Spinoff’s survey of gender bias in visual arts found that ...
Based on their study of trans wellbeing Aotearoa, the research team at Counting Ourselves find six data points that highlight the strength of our trans and non-binary community.Last month the first comprehensive national survey on transgender health and wellbeing in Aotearoa was published by the academics and researchers at Counting ...
The SpinoffBy Dr Jaimie Veale, Jack Byrne and Ahi Wi-Hongi
Open Mike 12/06/2018 
Next year is an election year, and Labour needs money to fund its campaign. So naturally, they're selling access:Labour is charging wealthy business figures $1500-a-head to lunch with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at its annual conference later this month. [...] On the weekend beginning November 29th, around 800 delegates will ...4 hours ago
Words and images by Jacqui Gibson Gone are Auckland Museum’s days of doing science using a museum-centric academic approach, after Māori land rights holders Ngāti Kuri gave the museum an ultimatum.
MediaWorks announced in October 2019 that it intended to sell off its struggling television business and cancel or cut back on several popular local programmes, including New Zealand Today, Married at First Sight New Zealand and 7 Days. Its radio and outdoor advertising arms are currently performing well, but MediaWorks’ ...10 hours ago
Some readers may remember that I mentioned last year that I was applying for NZ citizenship. I filled out the paperwork and had my original citizenship interview in February. Everything went well until they discovered that, because I had spent five months in the US in 2017, I had not ...1 day ago
by Deirdre O’Neill It is becoming quite acceptable for certain sections of the left to declare that people like me – women who are ‘gender critical’ – should not be allowed in leftist or anarchist spaces. Leaving aside the arrogance and implicit authoritarianism of this claim, its lack of critical ...1 day ago
There is an article in The Conversation, written by Jeremy P. Shapiro (Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences, Case Western Reserve University), about what he sees as the psychologically-based underpinnings of three main matters that seem to vex people all around the planet. The article is titled “The Thinking ...2 days ago
. . Blogger Martyn Bradbury has won his case against unreasonable search and surveillance against the NZ Police; and subsequent Police attempts to produce evidence in secrecy, in a closed Court. His case highlights a disturbing growing trend in Aotearoa New Zealand for State power to be used against ...2 days ago
Different Strokes: If a multicultural immigration policy imposes no obligation on immigrant communities to acknowledge and ultimately embrace their host nation’s most cherished traditions and values, then how is that nation to prevent itself from being reduced to a collection of inward-looking and self-replicating ethnic and cultural enclaves?THE COALITION GOVERNMENT’S ...3 days ago
by The Council of Disobedient Women In her excellent oral submission to the Abortion reform select committee on 31st October on behalf of Otago University’s Department of Public Health, historian and public health researcher Hera Cook stated: “We would ask that the committee not use the term ‘pregnant persons’ and ...6 days ago
If FFNZ really put their faith in “Top Medical Journals” they would now be amending their billboards to recognise new research results. Image from FFNZ but updated to agree with the latest research. ... 1 week ago
And to think he gave all the potential goodwill away with that moronic, cult-like statement (repeated ad nauseam by many National hardliners) that Key is quite simply “the greatest PM we ever had”…
Installation complete: this was nothing ... 2 weeks ago
The chairman of the Upper North Island Supply Chain Strategy (UNISCS) working group, Wayne Brown, has hit back at critics of his group’s recommendations to relocate the Ports of Auckland cargo operations to Whangarei’s deepwater port of Northport. The working group's recommendation to close Auckland waterfront to all but cruise ...54 mins ago
We're setting our young people up for success, investing in education around the country. ...8 hours ago
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has announced further support as the Government of Samoa responds to a serious measles outbreak. “New Zealand will deploy a further 18 vaccination nurses, bringing the total to 30 working in Samoa over the next four weeks,” Mr Peters said. “A New Zealand Medical Assistance ...45 mins ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Lilburn, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Melbourne You’re driving down an unfamiliar street on a clear spring evening. You’ve been invited to a friend of a friend’s party, at a house you’ve never been to before. Tracking the street numbers, you ...26 mins ago
Crimestoppers New Zealand launched its updated website www.crimestoppers-nz.org today. As well as catering for traditional anonymous reports the site now supports mobile users and allows files and images to be attached. The changes support people of all ...42 mins ago
Prince Andrew has spoken for the first time in public about his friendship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. What did he say to create such a media storm, and how did he get into this mess in the first place? First thing’s first: who is Prince Andrew? Prince Andrew, Duke ...47 mins ago
Hamilton Press Club life president Steve Braunias on the next guest speaker - embattled TV3 employee Patrick Gower. ...1 hour ago
Pay TV operator Sky Television expects its revenue and earnings to fall after investing in new content, new services and sponsorship deals. ...2 hours ago
Air New Zealand has cancelled some of its international flights due to ongoing issues with its Rolls-Royce engines. ...3 hours ago
Air New Zealand has cancelled some of its international flights due to ongoing issues with its Rolls-Royce engines. ...5 hours ago
The Labour-led coalition may have to generate a second wave of Jacindamania if it is to win another term in the Beehive. Re-election is not an impossible dream, despite the failure of Labour to deliver what many of those who voted for it in 2017 expected. Retiring Green MP Gareth Hughes ...5 hours ago
Landlords say they feel under siege with the government planning to make it tougher for them to boot out troublesome tenants; and skilled immigrants waiting for a residents visa say its unfair officials are fast tracking applications for those on salaries over $105,000. ...8 hours ago
Retiring Green MP Gareth Hughes says the pace of change in the current Government is not fast enough for his liking but that is not the reason he is quitting politics. ...8 hours ago
Labour is charging wealthy business figures $1500-a-pop to lunch with Jacinda Ardern; and NZ First-linked forestry company pushed for govt funds. ...8 hours ago
An ambitious new partnership between Sky Sports and more than 50 sports promises more free sport for Kiwis. Suzanne McFadden looks at how it will change the way we see female athletes ...11 hours ago
Catriona MacLennan helped conduct a survey of the top NZ companies to establish the ethnicity of their directors. The results were not surprising, but also far from encouraging. ...11 hours ago
Episode 1 in a series on the trials of injured animals as they’re rescued, rehabilitated and released back into the wild follows the rescue of a yellow-eyed penguin. ...11 hours ago
Steve Braunias reviews the as-told-to book of All Blacks skipper Kieran Read, and fully expects it to suck. ...11 hours ago
The disastrous impact of banks selling risky financial derivatives to farmers is still being felt in rural communities more than a decade later. ...11 hours ago
New Zealand Defence Force's failed to clean up properly after itself in Afghanistan - with the result that seven children have been killed and another 10 civilians injured. ...11 hours ago
Green Party MP Gareth Hughes first entered Parliament in 2010. ...1 day ago
Many fund managers are overconfident and the public buy the illusion. ...1 day ago
Part 2: In this excerpt from the evidence of Sir Maarten Wevers in the High Court case of Winston Peters over his superannuation leak, the former head of the Prime Minister's Department explains what ministers should be told by public servants ...1 day ago
In this excerpt from the evidence of Sir Maarten Wevers in the High Court case of Winston Peters over his superannuation leak, the former head of the Prime Minister's Department summarises our governing arrangements. ...1 day ago
New Zealand's coroners learnt lessons of cultural competency and communication from March 15. ...1 day ago
As a follow-up to our post about police station office hours for the public and in the cause of balance, we bring positive news – or rather, we are passing on the positive news which the police delivered in a press statement, It’s all about the productivity gains achieved – it ...2 days ago
"I rang the ambulance service then went to the shed": a new short story by a master of the form, Oamaru writer Owen Marshall. ...2 days ago
Trump and Kim will meet accompanied only by interpreters.
On the agenda: real estate and money laundering opportunities, bribe management, meth and human trafficking arrangements, contract killing.
According to Pete George, this does not constitute a crisis for our democracy.
Bryce Edwards sees it differently.
Nearly 64% of the electorate did NOT vote.
18% of the electorate voted for Bidois.
“But what about the fact that there was a low voter turnout. According to the Electoral Commission, voter turnout is estimated to be 43.7%. This figure is based on the numbers that have voted, as a percentage of those enrolled. However, the Electoral Commission and Statistics New Zealand previously estimated that in Northcote there is an eligible voter population of 54,790 (of which about nine per cent are not enrolled). So, when you take that into account, the 19,900 who voted, make up an even smaller “real” voter turnout – which is well under 40%.
It also means that the vote for each candidate as a proportion of all eligible voters in Northcote is somewhat smaller than it might initially appear, since about 35,000 eligible voters choose not to vote – which somewhat overshadows the 10,147 who voted for the winning candidate.”
http://nzagainstthecurrent.blogspot.com/2018/06/northcote-voter-turnout-lower-than.html
Compulsory voting is the solution. Oz have done it for decades and there’s engagement across the demographics as a result.
National rejected that along with pretty much every other suggested reform, my how surprising. Keeps the bastards honest, where that’s practical for some parties, when they know the disaffected are forced to vote.
Like road rules they serve a greater good even if they’re not popular.
Stv returns mayors in places like wellington with as little as 22% of the actual vote and as little as 11% of the enrolled vote.
No one screamed constitutional crises when the dippiest dipper ever, Celia wade brown, was voted in
Farrar and his cronies certainly did. But then, they’re constantly screaming.
I ignore broken records like Farrar. Our views align in some areas but his messaging is wrong
Some of your views align with “broken record” Farrar?
Which ones?
What a lot of silly nonsense.
Think of it as like an opinion poll, but instead of say 300 giving their view, its 19,000
In other words , THE RESULT WOULD BE EXACTLY THE SAME AS THOUGH EVERYONE VOTED.
The idea that 19,000 vote and we dont know what ALL the actual voters think is seriously nutty thinking
Bryce Edwards needs a good telling off
Probably not actually. The people who vote tend to be more right-wing and rich compared to those who don’t.
This was a by-election at the start of the term of a new government for a seat previously held by the opposition. Of course turnout will be low. There was nothing really at stake. Jumping up and down and trying to call this the death of democracy in NZ is ridiculous.
As I say, we need compulsory voting. Voluntary voting simply isn’t working.
Australia shows that compulsory voting works far better.
Does it Draco? This from a stuff article after their 2016 Federal Election:
“A long winter federal election campaign in Australia that clashed with school holidays has resulted in the biggest voter no-show in the country since compulsory voting began in 1925.
More than 1.4 million Australians last month failed to cast a vote for the House of Representatives in what ultimately became a cliff-hanger election. The figure represents more than 9 per cent of 15.7 million eligible voters.
The turnout is the worst since 1922, when voting was optional and just 59 per cent of eligible people cast a lower house vote.”
It’s a political hot potato. As you say, it’s those doing it toughest that are least inclined to vote. Fining those that struggle to keep food up to mouths is popularity suicide. If zero punitive measures against non voters, there’s no point introducing the fresh law.
Yes it does.
9% compared to more than 50%.
Or even in general elections where we’re seeing less than 80% turnout.
You also seem to have missed this line in the bit you quoted:
Seems that Australians are actually quite happy with compulsory voting.
And yet our governments keep doing it to beneficiaries.
All it takes is good advertising before each election and the number fined will be minimal.
Yeah ok, I’ve gone and done some more reading on it. I’m not as partisan as I was. I lived in Oz for a long period, it is no hardship to vote. Chasing up non voters appears to be a token effort, 12 people in Darwin taken to court after the last election.
I dread the influx in….”I voted for that chappie with the straight teeth, whatisname? I once saw him in a Crusaders jersey” vox pops.
I suspect that it actually isn’t. Most would be given a warning and to vote next time or else. Many would be given the voting slip and told here and now or else.
You probably just don’t hear about it which is unfortunate.
If you’re not on the electoral roll how do they know who to chase up?
But also, in order to enrol you have to sign a form. No person can legally be forced to sign any form they don’t wish to sign.
Just because you’re not on the electoral roll doesn’t mean that you can’t be traced. Got a bank account? Pay your taxes? Drive a car?
Yeah, I’m one of the few people who have no difficulty with the government doing data matching to catch criminals. Especially when those criminals are fucking over our democracy.
It is a legal requirement to be enrolled. You must sign that form whether you like it or not.
How exactly does Bryce Edwards see it differently, Ed? His piece is actually very noncommittal and empty of firm opinion on the matter at hand.
I think your comment has put a few here on the wrong foot …
You could have made the argument as to why you think the numbers reflect badly on the current state of our representative democracy but you didn’t. Why not?
Nanny state?
More like angry drunken big bully Brother State.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/359376/woman-has-benefit-wrongly-suspended-for-second-time
I am struggling to work out what Andrew Little was thinking in putting about his agenda to dump the three strikes legislation without first getting his political ducks in a row. Is he a political idiot?
Little floats idea, gives Winston the opportunity to make his mark, both postpone the issue for a while and a satisfactory result flies through the House; everybody wins. Meanwhile, the Right enjoy a temporary lift, to no eventual gain. The Coalition Government works, and is seen to be working, as it should.
Spin Spin Spin RG, just like a Council does when it imposes 8% rates increases. Your man was fed to the dogs, not unexpected.
8.3 and in any case, is your “dogs” reference to the poor autistic man, savaged yesterday by rottweilers near Winton? That’s harsh for this time of the morning, Ruby. For any time really.
That seems an excessively generous interpretation to me.
Occam’s says more like Little, who was a politically inept leader, simple fucked up the politics.
I agree the politics are nowhere near as bad as our aggressively authoritarian political media seem to think, but the Likes of Audrey Young seem very under employed most of the time. Not a lot of substance happens in our politics, so they are reduced to making mountains out of molehills and reporting two flies climbing a wall with breathless urgency.
I just wonder why they don’t occupy their copious spare time writing in depth backgrounders.
“politically inept leader”, even if true, doesn’t translate to inept politician. I suggest that in fact, Little is a good and efficient politician, especially when out of the “leader” spotlight. In this instance we can only speculate, but my view is that he’s not so “inept” as to be unaware of what Winston’s position would invariably have been, and in fact played the game to the satisfaction of all-but-you (and some other posters 🙂
Except his actions are generating headlines like this:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/12/new-zealand-coalition-under-strain-as-jacinda-ardern-prepares-for-maternity-leave
Now this is clearly overblown but Politics is as much about perception than reality and if the perception is a Government that is unstable soon enough it will be.
Headlines, schmedlines – they’re froth, Gosman, eye-catching dross, the don’t mean anything; that you’re enchanted by them is… a shame. Nevermind, there are others who can see past the headlines .
Your believing that illusions are real is … cute. Serious political commenters though, don’t fall for illusions. The Government won’t become “unstable” simply because National declares that to be the case; your confidence in that sort of fickleness marks you as … fickle.
Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your point of view) serious political commentators don’t generally dictate the popularity of political parties. If the perception gains traction that a governing coalition is unstable then people will think is is likely to fall and stop supporting it. Yes this is unfair to a degree but it is political reality.
So?
Three years of parties disagreeing in public (but respectfully) without the government being brought down will show those headlines as stupid.
The media need crises to sell copy. I can understand why the populace might not be used to a government of adults, but they’ll learn what should be the norm rater than the exception.
I was thinking about that possibility except it has had a negative impact on the Government generally. It looks like the political management skills of Little and by extension the PM are flawed. Just listen to the attack by Guyon Espiner on Morning report this morning.
Guyon’s attack was, by accounts I’ve read, a failed one. Little would have been attacked even more vigorously, had his proposal gone ahead un-modified, as you know – Farrar et al would have been shrieking heedlessly; as it is, they’re crowing prematurely. What the media does is of little consequence, pun intended, and a smart operator will play them. Little’s a clever guy and Winston’s not too shabby either.
Little clever? Nah, he’s either stupid or arrogant. Clearly he didn’t have NZF on board with the three strikes policy, and Peters has rescued his plummeting polling at the expense of the hapless Mr Little.
Yours is a simplistic world view, Baba Yaga. Sophisticated ideas must make you feel dizzy, yes?
The proposed repeal of the 3 strikes law was not sophisticated. It was stupid.
No it wasn’t; you’re like a cuckoo clock, babayaga; same phrase, over and over cuckoo, cuckoo!
Is Baby Gaga trolling again today or is he being sensible today, Gossie and Mullet Head are going stupid again ?
Little should never had floated this idea as essentially a done deal. He could have made out that he was very keen to review the law including and then allowed Winston credit for nixing it.
The whole thing has been a shambles.
Luckily Winston’s going after MSD and Bennett et al plus the shenanigans in Singapore will quickly push it off the news cycle (for now).
But the ongoing government messiness and poor comms etc can only be explained away by Ardern for so long before it starts to become a major liability.
“the ongoing government messiness” is a message constructed and broadcast by the Right. There’s a grain of truth in it, as there would be for any and every “new” coalition Government, but the blue magnifying glass is being held over that small issue as part of National’s programme of denigrating the Government.
I admire your rather generous assessment of the situation Robert and I’d like to be able to agree with you but I can’t.
Three Strikes and law and order issues generally are just too sensitive electorally to be allowed to play out like this has. Apparently there was almost outright panic in Little’s office a week or so ago when the OIA on 3 strikes was released to media and they realised how it was going to go.
Oh well, I can’t argue with “apparently”…
Mind you, to say that “Three Strikes and law and order issues generally are just too sensitive electorally” shows me that any approach would bring problems, so this way, the usual attack lines are blurred and criticism blunted; in fact, the “usual suspects” are crowing with delight; that’s a pretty clever strategy if in fact, Little and Peters colluded. I’d do it the way they have; play some feints and switches and slip the soul through while confusion reigns.
That’s the thing though, apart from the lock-‘em-up-and-throw-away-the -key crowd pleasers any sensible measures on crime and justice are always problematic to put in front of the electorate.
It’s hard to see how giving the Opposition and their pals in the media an even bigger stick with which to beat the government on this is going to blur attack lines and blunt criticism?
Hard to see? Not for me 🙂
Will the Government get a progressive package of law & order reforms through in the near future? Yes, I believe they will. Will there be less noise around it, due to the “moderating” effect of Winston’s recent action? Yes, I believe there will. Clever play? Yes, I still believe so. I don’t take much note of the wailing and gnashing of Righty teeth around this issue.
Well I hope you’re right Robert. Otherwise the future is a correctional facility on every bloody street corner.
I hope I am also, ScottGN. I think Andrew Little’s bright and will serve us well.
What is missing throughout this debate, especially in the MSM, is the fact the 3 Strikes is a stupid politically motivated law, a blunt instrument that doesn’t work.
The MSM, if it was being even-handed, should be making the point that Labour and the Greens are right to try to get it repealed rather than treating this as an issue they hope will destroy the coalition.
Well done Andrew Little for sticking to his guns on Morning Report this morning.
An even-handed MSM would do itself out of a job, consequently, it always tips the table one way or the other, to maintain tension. We readers love tension; makes us feel alive!
I guess we have to accept the msm controls the government and the electorate.
What are we going to do about?
Recent history would indicate our MSM are incapable of/disinterested in exploring the effects of policy as opposed to ‘political drama’…..and yet ‘we’ persist in our support.
Their version of ‘reality TV’?
““the ongoing government messiness” is a message constructed and broadcast by the Right.”
No, the messiness is surely and simply the result of inexperience combined with incompetence mixed with hubris. From the coalition agreement that gifted a billion dollars to a NZF slush fund, to the election of the Speaker (Labour’s screw up and then cover up), to the disgraceful decision making around oil and gas exploration, through to the incompetence of MIA Ministers such as Curran, Jackson, Davis, Twyford et al, this is a shambolic government mislead by a PM whose previous claim to fame had been working in a fish and chip shop. You were warned.
No, the messiness is natural and unavoidable. It’s the reporting that’s unnatural; the endless whine that you are part of, babayaga, that’s the twitter. Plus, You Have Been Warned!!!
Bomber’s on the money here.
“By publicly dumping a law that was only rhetoric and theatre in the first place (it’s only impacted 20 prisoners) Labour…
gives NZ First oxygen at a time when Labour desperately requires their coalition partners to survive
blunts National’s law and order attack which they will be playing all year with new tough on crime members bills.
Allows the perception to the petty consumers of bitterness that Labour have had to back down on prison reform when the actual process will continue. Liberal twitter and NGOs on twitter will lambast Little and scream at the injustice which will convince the petty consumers of bitterness in muddle Nu Zilind that Labour must have changed their position to outrage the Twitterratti in such a way.
Little loses the battle so he can win the war.”
If thats true its a bit short sighted because from now until the next election National can point to Labour being soft on crime so a vote for NZFirst is a vote for being soft on crime whereas a vote for National is a vote for three strikes
I’m sure he’s like most politicians, a decent, well meaning, reasonably intelligent person.
However your question: “Is he a political idiot?” is an easy question to answer. He’s failed twice to win an electorate seat and was driving Labour to oblivion before he did the smartest thing he’s ever likely to do, politically, and resign so yes, politically speaking, he is an idiot
However he is rocking a decent beard so thats something in his favour
You call that a beard?
It is just like Mallard’s.
All it is is that the hair from the top of his head has slipped down his face.
The only halfway decent beard any recent MP has had is the one Gareth Hughes showed off.
That added about 10 years to his age and made him look old enough to vote.
Even then he couldn’t compare to some of the early PMs like Seddon, Vogel, Stafford or Weld.
You call that a beard?
https://robertwoodlander.blogspot.com/2018/05/coming-clean.html
I am impressed. You could have been PM, or was it Premier, in 1860’s New Zealand.
Best I can manage is councillor, Southland Regional Council, 2010 – 2018. I wonder if I’m on my own in being a bearded councillor in NZ? I certainly don’t meet many others.
That’s a beard that commands respect!
I thank you, but respectfully suggest you talk with my wife who holds a slightly different view 🙂
Secretly all women like men with beards and I read it in Oblivious Male Monthly so it must be true
They do, yes; well, mostly. I was told by my wife’s maiden aunt, way back, that she could “never make love to a man with a beard”. I guessed she meant something more arcane than it seemed by that, but still, I was taken aback. Didn’t stop me though!
You made love to your wife’s maiden aunt? That’s a pretty ballsy move I gotta say. 🙂
“Didn’t stop me though”
How could I let that slip through???
I’m a “share the love” kinda guy. Truth to tell, Maiden Aunt’s comments didn’t deter me from wooing her niece (much more seemly, aye, though not quite the story it was shaping up to be 🙂
Kym Koloni NZF stood as an Independent Candidate and got 95 votes, not looking good for NZF down the track ?
Not looking good for Kym.
NZF might have to start looking for a new candidate for Northcote if they are going to contest the seat in the 2020 Election ?
Crikey! Is Guyon looking for a bonus? His interview smacks of desperation. Fortunately Jacinda was able to make him sound just that. DESPARATE. She treated him like the bad mannered child that he is and he achieved absolutely nothing with his hectoring,bullying attitude. Maybe he should try a measured professional approach and he might get taken seriously. An excellent, sensible calm and clear attitude from Jacinda with her replies was wonderful to hear. At least one adult in the conversation! Guyon is past his used by date.
+1
Agree +100% the guy is a joke.
Was Guyon ever that “persistent” with Key?
Don’t remember him being so. Guyon was grateful that Key would allow a very sparse minute just before the 8 o’clock news and treated him gently in case he didn’t turn up at all.
Of course he was as persistent with Key and English. You just can’t remember because you obviously thought that any persistent questioning of Key/English was justified as a result of your political bias.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/75031554/Theres-a-place-for-hard-nosed-interviews-but-not-aggression
Crikey iannie, you forgot the previslabagummnt, previslabagummnt, previslabagummnt, previslabagummnt, previslabagummnt, exchange already?
Totally agree. Guyon Espinor is a hectoring bore. I am tired of his style of interviewing. He’s more suited to Fox News.
And as for John Key – for years he refused to be interviewed on Morning Report.
Did you not follow the link I provided?
“Guyon Espinor is a hectoring bore. ”
QFT
If President Trump gets a good poll bump from the results of this North Korean summit he will be sending a strong signal to Romney and the traditional conservative Republican wing that there is only one Republican nomination for the next Presidential contest – and it’s him.
If the Dems don’t get their house sorted in pretty quick order instead of folding and undercutting each other like they did in the banking reforms, then they will be very hard pressed to beat Trump.
The rest might be a bit too far into the future, but Trump’s massive strength of perpetual chaos, drama, and through that total name-domination in the media is sustaining a very strong base to build from.
Yahoo! Go Andrew Little. Guyon needs to give up. He’s looking like an amateur. Three strikes AND OUT! He should stick to reporting on weather.
@ffloyd….agreed. I loved both Little and Jacinda taking it to Espiner this morning on Morning Report-well worth a listen to anyone who hasn’t heard it.
Both showed themselves to be smart and on top of the issue. I’m still reveling in this government after 9 years of hell.
Sniggering Gyno did seem a little taken aback when Andy bit back.
Why? What was the issue with the way he approached the topic this morning?
Our future trade focus should be Asia and we should be part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, hanging off the USA’s coat tails is not going to do us any good in the future, the future trade growth region is Asia.
Forget about the USA let them do their own thing.
Our future trade focus should be on minimising trade. That’s hard though and does require developing our economy and our society.
It’s better to trade with countries that make different stuff. Korea makes real steel and computers, and does not compete with our ag goods. The US, with its weird corn subsidies and mad cow disease doesn’t want our stuff.
Except that that’s a load of bollocks.
Dubious Assumptions on Comparative Advantage
Loss from Trade
We make steel. Around 1.5 million tonnes of it per year. We export around 1 million tonnes of it. And that doesn’t even take into account all the raw iron sand that we export.
The problem with that scenario is that we will, quite rapidly, run out of iron deposits.
Our focus on farming is depleting our soils as well poisoning our waterways. So, that’s not sustainable either.
Electronics tend to made out of silicon and doping with semi-conductors. We have significant deposits of both of those as well. So, we could easily make our own electronics from our own resources. Just need to develop those deposits and build the factories. Do that and buying our own would be cheaper than importing due to distance and transport costs.
Our main agricultural export ATM seems to be dairy. The US is massively over-producing dairy to the point where their farmers are losing money on sale of it. In other words, even if we had an FTA with the US, we wouldn’t be able to export there simply because they can provide it themselves cheaper. And once they get that over-production sorted it’ll still be cheaper to buy US produced milk in the US than to buy NZ milk in the US.
An export led economy is doomed due to the very real physical limitations of available resources.
An economy that uses it’s own resources and recycles them is actually sustainable due to the resources always being available.
In other words, reality makes trade unsustainable.
God. Who gave Armstrong the kiss of life. ANOTHER opinion piece on his intimate knowledge of Jacindas state of mind, this time on Andrew Littles 3strike postponement. Definitely on a Labour sabotage mission.
Is Armstrong working as a psychologist now, just wait till after the baby is born and the post natal depresssion kicks in, Guyon, Richardson, Garner and Armstrong will have a fieldday ?
Armstrong is a devious National Party shill (as opposed to a journalist).
He lost all credibility as a commentator when he demanded Cunliffe’s resignation over a meaningless 10 year old letter. He later admitted he was wrong to do this, but of course he knew that at the time.
Pretty sure you think that about much of the media given your comments in the past.
Yes, Armstrong, Cunliffe, the old, meaningless letter – nadir.
Has the old fossil Armstrong crawled out of his grave ?
Fossils can crawl?
Yikes!
There’s some HUGE fossils out there.
And some of them in graves, I read!
Justice! Fair play! Good for Nicky and for future police action. Though it still doesn’t explain why the police were so active for Slater.
“Investigative journalist Nicky Hager has accepted a police apology and payment of “substantial damages” following the unlawful search of his home during the investigation into the hacking that led to the Dirty Politics book.”
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12068928
Nicky Hagar getting a big pay out from the NZ Police +100%
Some very strange behaviour by the NZ Police under the previous National Government ?
Just listening to K Ryan talking to someone? regarding the meeting between dumb and dumber. He says it is just a publicity exercise and won’t achieve anything. Does this mean it will be all about ‘summit and nowt?
Nah its all about someone and newit ?
So about time we heard something about this:
https://www.labour.org.nz/maria_berryman_review
“Ms Berryman is commencing immediately with the initial focus of her investigation on the Young Labour camp in February. The review is expected to take between two and three months,” said Nigel Haworth, Labour Party President.
Why should expect to hear anything? t has nothing to do with you. It was a purely internal matter for the Labour Party.
However I will tell you the gist of the enquiry.
Nothing happened.
The stories about it were all fabrications by lying members of neo-Nazi organisations like the National Party.
There were no members of the Party at the affair.
The people who were there all went to bed early and no one saw or heard anything.
The only problems were caused by fifth columnists from the National Party and other Fascist organisations.
But nothing happened.
Nothing further will be said.
It is time to move on.
But nothing happened.
There. I think you would agree that is a pretty fair summary of the matter.
Being that the media seem to have forgotten about it as well its hard to see how the left think theres a bias against them
Also: Pony Tail
Orangutan fights off a bulldozer to protect its home
Once again a darling of many a hard core lefty has turned in to an authoritarian douchebag and is messing his country up.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/11/nicaragua-university-protest-daniel-ortega-occupation
Hopefully the IRD will do an audit on John Key’s affairs and determine whether he paid tax on the NZRail shares which he failed to disclose to the NZ Public, as he may have bought those shares with the intention of selling them (ie speculation) as he was definitely not a long term investor in NZRail, similar to one of the other major shareholders Fay Richwhite ?
You do come up with interesting conspiracy theories there. Interesting or wacky. Take your pick.
I’d like to think that those in power should have automatic audits to make sure they are not profiting from their power. In particular due to the rise of the super rich to being in politics, aka financial trader makes PM aka KEY, the property developer/reality TV star make President aka Trump, the lawyer who makes his own laws aka Rodrigo Duterte…
What if we killed the job interview?
I’m sure that there are many managers and business owners who think that they’re great at interviews and yet are probably the most biased and make the worst mistakes because of that bias while they hire people just like them.
You have to wonder how a $6000 fine is going to deter employers after a 3.5 year breach of employing an illegal worker and not paying taxes and of course this is a person who is sponsoring in migrant workers too, for a liquor store.
If you calculate how much is being lost in each case, 3.5 years of someone else not getting a job, the police costs to prosecute, the deportation costs and the justice system and then the guy just gets a fine of $6000 and the loss of business to other stores who employ legal workers paying taxes! Crime sure does pay in this country!
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12069066
Weird that you can’t get somebody who needs a job locally to work at his store and how the government keeps bringing in low wage workers at the drop of a hat and the government doesn’t understand why poverty is increasing.
Apparently over 60% of people who end up in prison are unemployed… maybe have a think about, rather than building more prisons and having 3 strikes laws and work for dole schemes – actually employ our own citizens in real jobs at 40 hours a week so that they don’t need to turn to crime!
There is no longer an equal playing field in this country both for businesses and workers because there has become a culture of paying for for a fake job to get residency, underpaying for a job or having illegal workers paying no taxes taking jobs.
Even the sex workers are fed up with the illegal workers coming in on student and tourist visas!
You can’t run a country with less and less people paying taxes and ignoring the problem of fake jobs and illegal workers!
Start with the criminal employers who are not paying taxes, probably collecting many benefits like AS and WFF and creating these Ponzi schemes buying up more small and medium businesses and perpetuating the growing problems for other legitimate businesses and workers.
If Mike Williams’ numbers are correct, and he is CEO of the Howard League, much of the real problem is that more than 50% of prisoners are functionally illiterate. That is the number he gives in this link although I have seen other estimates of it being as high as 70%.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/80836726/mike-williams-and-the-howard-league-gives-prisoners-a-second-chance
They can’t read well enough, for example, to be able to get a driver’s licence because they can’t do the written tests.
They can’t get a job in today’s society because they can’t read.
When I was young I used to spend the University Summer break working in Wool Stores. You could get a job like that even if you could barely read or write. Being able to pick out the right numbers on the stencil when marking the weight was pretty much all you needed to be able to do.
Those sort of jobs simply don’t exist any more, but there are still people who can’t read well enough to do anything else. That is what is the best thing we can do to get people into jobs and out of prison.
I’m not saying that that is the only reason why this firm doesn’t hire locals. There are always ratbags who will hire immigrants at illegally low wages. It is however indicative of why there are people who can’t get jobs and just drift from one jail sentence to another.
My personal opinion is that the schools should make their absolute priority getting people up to a minimum level of literacy and numeracy before they worry about anything else at all. Cultural topics can wait. If you can’t read you can’t learn anything else anyway.
Agree literacy in prisons is a problem aka anyone illiterate should all be doing the primary school syllabus while in prison. I’m not talking about dinky little online courses, I think there should be full on schools in prisons for the inmates with one teacher per 20 inmates for example.
However once they get out of prison they should have an opportunity to get a job or even better not go to prison because they got a job when they left school/tertiary in the first place…
But my link was about an illegal worker working in a liquor store, I don’t think you need high literacy for that, in fact they seem to use symbols now on tills for products and the tills do all the calculations for the cash customers. So I think that illegal workers are a bad idea, we are just getting worse and worse in NZ, encouraging poor work practises with pathetic sentences and encouraging more of the same.
To give an example the guy who poached some Paua got 12 months in prison, his dive gear confiscated and not allowed to fish for 3 years. Someone who sent a hoax note to Fonterra got 8 years in prison. Grow a bit of cannabis and you could lose your house!
But poor working practises from employers, if they even get caught, actually seem to have a fine below what they made by their illegal actions!
The law should be banning employers caught hiring illegal workers from owning/managing a business for 3 years, let alone allow them to bring more people in as well as a fine of $100,000. They should also have IRD doing full audits to see if any suspicious payments are being made (aka bribes for jobs) and check if they are compliant in other tax matters.
The point is, people need to be doing something if they are unemployed and getting $150 p/w on the dole aint a good prospect and even worse ‘work for the dole at $150’, and a $600 p/w job in a liquor store, although not great, is better than nothing!
So if we are getting employers owning multiple businesses who have people paying for the job, working illegally or getting $2p/h (and there are many cases occurring of that), then it’s cutting someone else’s prospects down to get that job or someone else operating a business that operates within NZ law.
I’m sorry to have derailed your comments with my pet hobby horse.
I got distracted by the comment about prisoners having been unemployed.
Having people who are literate isn’t going to help very much with employers like the one in the case you quote of course. They employ people who will work for very little because otherwise they get deported.
The only real way to deal with such employers is to belt them with truly massive fines. Fines so high that it simply isn’t worth them offending. Then pay at least some of the money out to the people who were employed illegally or on less than the minimum wage. Treat their wealth as being like the money seized from the gangs. It is proceeds of a crime and should be forfeited.
On a different subject I would allow the employment of people who simply cannot produce enough to justify them having to be paid the minimum wage. There used to be sheltered workshops for such people. Sure they were paid very little. It did however give them something they could do. Make their living costs up with a benefit from the state.
alwyn, I would put it to you that the minimum wage is now so low that it is the equivalent of a sheltered workshop wage.
How desperate would you have to be to do hard, physically hurtful labour like picking Kiwifruit for possibly less than $15 an hour? (They jiggle it by paying by the basket, I believe.)
Be honest.
Well, to be honest your first statement is simply wrong.
If you compare the minimum wage to the median wage for a full time worker New Zealand has a very high ratio when compared to similar countries. In 2016, according to the OECD the ratios for a few selected countries was
New Zealand 0.61
Australia 0.54
Germany 0.47
France 0.61
USA 0.35
Canada 0.46
UK 0.41
The numbers for lots of other countries are here.
https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=MIN2AVE
I would fail to see how that can be described as “low”.
It is also much greater than would have been a typical wage in a sheltered workshop. They were, until the were forced out of existence by the Clark Government something like a couple of dollars/hour.
The workers didn’t live of that of course. They, or their families got benefits. It gave the people involved something to do each day and gave some meaning to their life.
Would I like to do something like Kiwifruit picking? At my age and physical condition of course not. When I was younger I quite happily spent about 3 months each year labouring and enjoyed it. It is amazing how much muscle you can put on in a few months when away from the student life.
I can’t really discuss the topic with you unless you see that your beliefs about minimum wages in this country are simply wrong, can I?
How can 50% of prisoners be illiterate surely they went to school until they were 15 years old, I thought we had a good education system or have we had teachers just f’ing around ? Sounds like B/S to me ?
@Tamati Tautuhi, sadly I think it is true, I have heard similar, sadly the result of Rogernomics and our ‘new’ educational systems like Tomorrow’s Schools where schools are run more like businesses. Personally I’d like to see our school principals have a more education focus, nowadays they are more like administration managers working our asset depreciation and infrastructure maintenance budgets… because in the old days the ministry took care of all that but now it’s up to the individual schools the burden often falling on principals… which has encouraged a certain type of principal more on the economic side than the educational side..
Of course in the business world, you have a CEO, CIO, CFO and CTO… but school principals are expected to do all that in one role, plus be the educational leaders..and of course the health and safety side.
Quite frankly it’s lucky we even get the results we do get with the weird ideas that have come about. The casualties are the kids who are failing 30% and the syllabus not getting every kid through.
It’s also not just for people who are going the criminal route that these jobs are useful for, I know people with intellectual disabilities who are all working in places like Supermarkets, or people who work in hospitality because they have other issues. The people I know are good workers who have been working for nearly a decade in that type of job. But they are being replaced and forced out of the work force by a growing issue of imported low wage workers, who as well as taking out jobs need more hospitals/schools/roads/houses.
So not only are people at the bottom facing job pressure, they also now have more competition for getting a house to rent and the rest of the country are subsidising these employers who are increasing at an alarming pace around the country. It used to just be Auckland, no more it’s spreading everywhere.
Likewise the quality of tourist experience. Stayed at a formally upmarket hotel taken over by an overseas firm who are buying up hotels around the country. If hardly any staff members, stinky minibar, dirty bathroom, un maintained rooms with bits falling off door, and rat bait packages under the bed in a resort that used to be luxury stay, sound like a good tourist experience, welcome to the ‘new’ New Zealand experience…
@Tamati. I can’t confirm the numbers but I am certainly willing to believe Mike’s comments. Did you read the article at that link?
I once tutored someone in one of our Prisons. That was about 40 years ago. He was, I think, in for selling drugs and he was doing part-time University courses at Massey. Definitely an odd one out. He said that many inmates couldn’t read and he would read their letters to them.
There have always been people like that. It isn’t a new thing or something that Tomorrow’s Schools caused. It just didn’t matter so much when there were lots of manual labour jobs available. When I was at High School we had a lot (around 20%) who arrived at the school for the third form at age 13 who really could not read or write. There were a couple of teachers who spent nearly all their time teaching them to read. You see without that skill they couldn’t learn anything else. Once they had, if ever, achieved that skill they could learn other things.
That was about 60 years ago. At least, as I suggested, in those days you could find work with very low skills. Now you can’t. In fact you may not even be able to get to work if you can’t drive.
If you don’t get the hang of reading early on at school I have been told you will withdraw from learning. You know you aren’t as good as other kids but you don’t want to admit it or to show up as being behind. So you say nothing. Then you stop attending school and things just never improve.
And no, it isn’t just “teachers f”ing off” as you put it. Kids missing school because they can’t keep up can’t be helped if they aren’t there.
On the other hand I think there are far too many things in the curriculum that could be ignored as long as this skill isn’t there. It might be a good thing to learn about all sorts of topics but they should be left until the three R’s are at some minimal level.
Good comment, alwyn (just for a change..)
Some time ago during my time as a teacher of languages I remember a very interesting lecture/article by some linguistic guru who claimed by some research or stats or who-knows-what that even in the best utopian country with the finest possible education system, a minimum of 8% (it could have been 1 in 8) in any population will inevitably remain functionally illiterate.
It is just the way humans are born.
So while some prisoners may be capable of becoming literate, it may well be that many will remain the way they are despite our efforts.
To my mind we need to reinstitute well-paid jobs for such people.
My surprising choice for an example of such nature is – rubbish collection!
In the good old days: a gang of 5 or so people with one truck. One drives; one or two stand up on rear, catch the bins lifted or thrown upwards to them, empty the bin into the truck, then toss the empty bin back down to the several runners, who place it back on the footpath upside-down. (A popular member of the old Waikato Rugby team used to do that job because it helped him keep fit for rugby.)
A radio would be blaring pop music on the back of the truck, the guys would be calling out to one another (including to driver) to maintain coordinated effort.
My toddler daughter would hear the parade coming, rush to the front window: the guys on the back of the truck used to look out for this, and would wave and grin, causing little toddler to wave back energetically. They seemed to love waving to little kids. They were cheerful enough to smile!
Lamentably, there is no such thing any more. Automated trucks, max of two people; no music; one might get fit by stepping on and off running board to toss bags (PLASTIC!!) of rubbish into the rear… The worst I saw was in Auckland where one sad-looking guy drove the truck that had mechanised arms to pick up wheely-bins and replace them (emptied out) back on the footpath. He looked bloody miserable. Probably paid far less than those earlier guys.
This disaster must apply to many other jobs as well. Fewer people less happy, being paid less money. I would not have minded working with those guys back when I was young. I would hate to work in modern rubbish collection.
This is how the Market leads us to bad places: mechanisation that is not well-guided is the enemy of human society. (The Luddites were right!)
The economy makes a good servant to society, but a very poor master.
And we have RWNJs still stupid enough to want the economy and the market to rule….
“A popular member of the old Waikato Rugby team used to do that job because it helped him keep fit for rugby”
He wasn’t the only one. Jerry Collins did the same thing in Porirua, even when he was a very well paid All Black. In the off season I believe but still.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/all-blacks/69363078/no-passengers-jerry-collins-earned-his-stripes-as-a-wellington-garbo
So weird though that although those jobs are apparently going, NZ seems to have so many ‘unskilled’ jobs on it’s ‘skilled’ migrant list… our productivity has been stagnant for years and our migrants are even lower qualified and less skilled than 5 years ago and so many lobby groups jumping up and down about how there are so many shortages of labour because apparently Kiwis are not suitable anymore. What a strategy for the future, sarc.
Posted an article a few days ago where an offshore hotel being built wanted 100’s of workers bought into Auckland on $20 p/h as decorators.
$20 p/h was the rate for a painter/decorater about 28 years ago!!! There are plenty of painter/decorators in Northland, but do you really think it is worth someone’s while to come to Auckland for a pay rate that comes from circa 1990 and is impossible to live on once you have a family ????
How the fuck can local construction survive when you are getting this under cutting?
Careful, dear alwyn – you have almost agreed with me.
What is the way ahead? They say that further automation is going to cut even more jobs. Would a sensible society not be concerned to see that its members were usefully and reasonably happily occupied, and use automation only as required to meet those needs, and improve the economy without social damage??
Instead we have a greedy group who use automation to maximise their profits, without caring that they create one hell-hole of a society.
A recipe for massive disaster.
Your thoughts? (As The Chairman was so fond of demanding..)
Prepare for much gnashing of teeth, keening and wailing from the left:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/104640010/live-donald-trump-and-kim-jong-un-meet-for-the-better-or-worse-of-the-world
That’s the chewing of popcorn, not the gnashing of teeth puckers.
Taika Waititi’s new film about to be released Jojo Rabbit where he is acting as Adolph Hitler, it should be entertaining.
Even better he is a “Polynesian Jew” playing Adolf Hitler, the imaginary friend of a young German lad whose mum is active in the Resistance (and Scarlett Johansson to boot!).
Never realised he was a Polynesian Jew ?
Were did you get that info from is it his mothers or fathers side ?
Should be a good watch.
http://www.indiewire.com/2018/06/jojo-rabbit-taika-waititi-adolf-hitler-photo-1201973380/
He says it in in the second Tweet. Possibly just Taika-speak though…
Must be on the mothers side of the family, interesting that will confuse the critics, mind you he likes to maximize the entertainment and confusion.
Taika Waititi is an amazing film director.
Amen to that.
Thorough verbal referencing conducted after interviewing is the key to making good hiring decisions, and psychometric testing can help too
Simon No Bridges says Winston should concentrate on governing the country rather than taking out vendettas against Senior Government Officials and MP’s.
What the clown needs to realize is it is a separate issue to NZF, the Coalition or the governing of the country. These people deliberately released Winston’s personal information into the public arena, to smear him and influence the outcome of the 2017 General Election. Dirty Politics Paper 102
If people are not brought to account by the judicial system these things will keep happening.
We had blatant fraud and corruption with the collapse of the BNZ which was covered up by the NZ Government and the NZ Judiciary in the Winebox Enquiry. Hence we have systemic failures of companies here in NZ ever since then, as “white collar crime” is considered a legitimate business activity here in NZ. However stealing pinky bars from the local petrol station will get you locked up for a good length of time.
It sends a message to the crooks “if you are going to commit fraud here in NZ do it for a reasonable sum of money ? ” Doug Graham would be a classic case and example.
I’m sure Slick Britches will have been careful to leave no traces of any advice to Pullya.
To Whom it May Concern
The Standard used to be, Worthwhile. But now that it is infested with Trolls it is so dull and childlike. It iooks and acts like a toddler with a dirty bottom.
Gosman, James, baba yaga. Graffiti Inc.
Observer; The Standard is still worthwhile and then some. Those folk you “name” are our “creative tension providers” – without them, we are soft. Harden up, enjoy the creative stress!
You just have to scroll, or scribe past them, throw them the odd lure or live bait when you want a bit of entertainment, as it doesn’t take them long to come up the berley trail, just don’t feed them too much as they can chew up a lot of precious time and bait.
Berley = chum – I like your style, Tamati.
12/06/16 The Standard Pick Six Troll Competition
Report: We had good early activity by two trolls Gossie was up early and I am not sure who the other one was, today we have had good troll activity throughout the day, and it is highly likely we will get the Pick 6 today b4 12.00am, yesterday we didn’t get the last leg b4 12.00am but we got 5 legs in. So far today we have had activity from, Gossie, Mullet Head, James, Puckish Rogue & Baby Gaga. I will post the results later once we have analysed all the days trolling activity across T/S.
As I have suggested they should set up there own Blog Site and go all out, I guess they are over here undercover from Kiwi Blog & Whale Oil websites to keep themselves entertained ?
“Baby Gaga” is good. What can you do with “James”?
Janus? A Roman god, after all.
*Cough cough* Feeling a bit left out here, wheres the love?
Has Baby Gaga and James both been trolling today or just James ?
And how do we classify contributors? Who could decide whether a certain genuinely concerned Leftie (who often makes comments that look so) is in fact not what he seems?
No James. A James-free day. James has not darkened our door. James has been absent (for years 🙂
James? You mean James ‘The Mad Butcher’ James?
Ha!
* Grunts: Eat! MEAT!
Watched Question Time today. Bridges all geared up to smash Andrew Little but crashed out having to face Winston “On behalf Of the PM.”
Winston was at his best. Succinct. Amusing. And made Simon look like a very very silly little boy. Winston will be great as Acting PM.
Q1 https://www.parliament.nz/en/watch-parliament/ondemand?itemId=200714
PS Has Simon sorted out his hair stylist?
Lovely. Paula Bennett looks scorched .
He will have to put a lot more brylecream on if he is going to be slippery enough to out smart Winston.
By the looks of it, Paula and Simon share the same hair stylist. That style suits them well; it makes Paula look older and Simon look younger.
Little bit of synergy there between the two of them lol.
both just as slimy.
I think “slick” is the word you were looking for 😉
You know the country is in trouble when a dentist launches a petition to stop DIY dentistry
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/audio/2018648930/petition-launched-as-diy-dentistry-grows
Winston, cat; what’s his name, (Opposition leader) mouse. Bennett took a slamming from Mallard. All’s well in the world.
Winston is having the.time.of.his.life.
Poor National. Stuffed!
Apologize to the ambulance service people it’s not like Eco Maori rings a ambulance every day. I was informed that the service is busy and the time was 40 min. The last time I had a ambulance rang was a hcoptter I did not wait I got my son to take me to hospital.
Ka kite ano