These business people need to grow up and play by market rules. Put the wages up. Try $30 hour, or $35 hour, or heaven forbid $40 hour. See what happens. They are happy to take advantage of market conditions when it works in their favour, but when it works against them its all wah wah wah cry to nanny state. Pathetic children.
The bullshit is thick in the air. Workers have no sympathy for them. They are authors of their own demise.
I wish they would stfu – tired of hearing and reading this issue.
Did you notice that the majority of people actually didn't want the Rogernomic adjustments that brought in the present model of capitalism?
There's a point where have to accept that the only reason why we have the system that we have is because our democratically elected officials went against our wishes and that they're still doing it.
Yes, we support the system that's in place but that's because have no choice because we're not a democratic country and then we get used to it.
Rogernomics did not create the demand (it did impact the distribution) and to state that we have no choice highlights the systemic nature….there is choice ,just not one we are prepared to take.
I still remember it. Most did not want the Rogernomic reforms. 4th Labour's second term came about because people still didn't trust National and still didn't truly appreciate just what Labour were up to.
4th National got in because they implied, pretty heavily, that they were going to undo Rogernomics and then they went harder.
If we didn't have FPP in 1993 National would have been out but all the wasted votes ensured that they got back in.
Then we went to our first MMP election and people voted in NZFirst because they implied that they were going to go with Labour and would undo the reforms. Except, once they got in, they went with National. They did slow National down somewhat but the reforms continued.
It goes on. Our democratic government is littered with it not doing what the people wanted and voting for change achieving no change at all.
We are not a democracy, never have been and, until we take power from government and govern ourselves, we never will be.
Completely agree. They offer less than $4/h more than the living wage (which is the absolute minimum needed for a basic life in nz) and think workers should be flocking to them. Pay more!
It's not just the hourly rates. I went to one of the hiring sites out of curiosity and the expectation seemed to be 60 hours plus a week and accommodation that you could pay for out of the minimum wages. Plus all of these people desperately wanting labour basically had a job ad that said jobs available contact XYZ. No mention of location type of work estimated starting date hourly rate etc just nothing.
It has also as far as I can see suffered from the outsourcing model. Once the individual grower paid the workers direct and they organised it around an area. Now it is a lot of corporate orchards, gangmasters etc and this overhead has to be paid for out of the picker wages essentially.
Plus the fruit picking looks like an industry that has invested zero in any form of improvement apart from maybe espaliered apple trees. Rather than people running around with huge carrying weights – dropping fruit onto soft touch collecting services temporary walk ways – there must be plenty of ideas out there.
And some of these areas could well invest in all of the year multi skilled workforces that went from pruning to picking etc etc.
Maybe to start with a backstop arrangement for an area through maybe welfare that gave permanent employment with the individual growers taking on paying into the scheme and training according to their needs. Then gradually turning the worker co operative over to the workers in an area.
Actually the growers could design such a scheme for themselves to give better employment and maybe get a little support to implement. Anything would be better than the current whining which is moving from pruning to calving to picking etc
Because last time I saw this in the papers it was a contract rate per very large container of apples picked. Somebody not used to it isn't going to make minimum wage no matter how hard they work.
And, being contract, they then have to work out their taxes and expenses and other legal stuff. Once that happens the minimum wage is far gone.
That wage depends on how much per box the global market for our horticulture products is prepared to pay for them.
We're a low-wage, low-productivity, low R&D economy. Have been for two centuries.
Many of our horticultural lines do make global margins. But under our model we're always going to need low wage workers to harvest our commodity lines.
We're a low-wage, low-productivity, low R&D economy. Have been for two centuries.
No, we used to do serious R&D. As I said a few weeks ago – HMS Achilles had NZ developed RADAR installed on it. It just never got the support that it needed to become successful in developing product lines. Too much focus on low pay, low return farming.
But under our model we're always going to need low wage workers to harvest our commodity lines.
Then it can only be said that its time to dump that failed model.
True. I recall teaching in a school that looked at a NZ designed colour computer system in the 80s. Killed by the Apple 2e which was offered in bulk at prices NZ product couldn't compete with.
But the NZ designed computer was streets ahead at that time.
If that's the case then the income has to be allocated not as direct wages but through the 'social wage' (free at the point of use healthcare, tertiary education, subsidised state-built housing … whatever). It will still have to be paid for – and pretty much by the same sorts of people as those who are offering low wages. The very definition of a free lunch is when the brutalities of 'market discipline' get imposed on one group, while another escapes them.
It's a shame there wasn't any joined-up thinking there.
Massive rent increases, the product of allowing capital to inflate our property markets, means workers would make a net loss if they stayed cheap and cheerful.
I'd prefer to see orchardists invest in robotic harvesting. Get rid of low wage workers for horticulture as much as possible.
Every job that can be done by robot should be done by robot. That's pretty much all the low wage jobs gone.
Question: Why are business people still building retail stores? Haven't they heard of the internet?
Now, what do we replace it with?
My suggestion is going full R&D with a full 25% of the working age population in it. Of course, that would mean making education free (again) and that government would be pushing massive amounts into that R&D so that we even end up with robotic manufacturing from our own resources.
It's lovely as a free floating idea, but we don't have the commercial culture that will do that. Regrettably.
Our university robotics and mechatronics courses are full to the gills, but there's limited opportunities for those graduates here. There are more than there use to be.
Even our most advanced companies with some success in this field, like Dunedin's Scott Technologies, got bought out.
Our university robotics and mechatronics courses are full to the gills, but there's limited opportunities for those graduates here.
And that is why the government should be stepping in. Make that R&D happen. It would develop our economy so that we were competitive and it would develop our local talent.
Even our most advanced companies with some success in this field, like Dunedin's Scott Technologies, got bought out.
All our successful tech companies are as the capitalists strive for an ever greater oligarchy and less competition.
It's also proof that the government needs to ban offshore sales and/or stamp harder on anti-competitive practices such as buying up the competition.
Like a lot of other automation projects, unless the grower is the IT guy, he's held to ransom by them, so no net gain.
One of the things they tried at Sealord back in the day was a waterknife – a bit like a laser cutter, but for filleting fish. It wasn’t a bad idea as such, but it needed constant adjustment to get decent yield, and the IT cost of that meant they really had no gain over manual filleters. Could’ve worked if there were ten or so waterknives in the area to justify a pair of full time techs.
Much filleting is done by machine these days, especially in farmed fish. Uses robotic mechnical blades, the best machines consistently give higher fillet yield than the best manual filleters.
If you go to a fish processing factory in Norway (I’ve been to a few) – high degree of automation with people doing a lot of checking and maintenance, rather than bulk manual work. They all get a high quality free lunch, high wages and moderate hours etc. The cars in the carpark are of high quality and the profits made by the companies are high.
Go to a comparable factory in NZ (also been to a few) – lots of people doing manual work, old bombs of cars in the carparks, lots of staff needing dental work and earning the absolute bare minimum with no other benefits. Company profits are variable but certainly not consistently higher than in Norway.
The efficiency of automated filleting has much to do with a standardized feedstock, so it's a natural fit for aquaculture – up to a point.
Before NZ is ready for comparable automation it needs a relative abundance of capable engineers – we don't have them.
The poverty of our workers is more to do with greed and incompetence higher up than the relative efficiency of filleting machinery – manual filleters continue to build skill and rate for years, so a well run bare space factory can compete quite well with an overcapitalised machine heavy space – a lesson Detroit is still losing money from failing to learn in autoassembly.
NZ churns out fillet block when, were our fisheries even vaguely competent, they'd produce a greater proportion of higher value cuts. But it's a colonial fishery – it basically doesn't support the local market at all, so it struggles to test market anything that isn't as basic as dirt. Our per kilo returns are rubbish, and per kilo of wild biomass they are execrable.
You can't build a valid quality marque running slave ships – but our companies are dumb enough to try, and our regulators ineffectual enough to let them.
The other angle to this exploitation is WINZ/MSD need to drop stand downs, sanctions and abatement rates, so NZers can move seamlessly between work and income support.
Dropping the inquisitions, providing travel and accom assistance, along with living wage, would likely see all the pickers these clowns would ever need become available for seasonal work.
What a great practical and realistic line to this thread. Good ideas. I suggest that people copy it and look at it regularly for an example of how much better NZ could be if we had participatory democracy, with people with knowledge and desire for a prosperous, enterprising country where we put our heads and muscles together for the good of a well-run country that made provision for all at their various levels.
Ad does say 'But under our model we're always going to need low wage workers to harvest our commodity lines.' So as AB suggests along with the others ideas, we need some better thought out ways. I think that is the trouble – neolib is like rote learning, it's learn and follow – like a cult really.
Well when people lose their jobs they are told it is an opportunity for them to do some thing different and BTW don't expect any government support.
Shouldn't these employers face the same barrage of advice?
But These employers are wanting student loan reductions, visa's issued, wanting quarantine used (if they say they want to pay for that then pay higher wages) plus a photo of two paid! managers. Anything but looking at themselves
The headings look good Ad, I hope the content provides a practical level of help – real social investment, not like National's banner waving, for the business approach mainly.
Our Plan to Get New Zealand Working – National Party
Jul 9, 2020 – And we developed the social investment, or actuarial approach, to help analyse which types of government spending and investment will in fact …
Vote Green if you want any real welfare reform and improvement. Labour has shown almost no interest in making any material changes in their first term – ignoring almost everything the WEAG recommended.
Carmel Sepuloni agreed to roughly 1 percent of the welfare report's recommendations by cost.
when you are on contract and have to pay your own acc levies and other associated self employment costs$ 25 per hour wont be $25 per hour. its a bullshit headline. and you will only get that rate IF you are very good at the job, and work flat out.
Pretty sure fruit pickers don't have to pay their own ACC levies etc.
But it is a piece-work rate, so only the fastest pickers working the best conditions can get that rate. Slower workers, or if you're picking trees that have already been picked once, you won't be able to achieve that hourly rate.
"How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, & Shape Our Futures" – Kim Hill interviews the author this morning at 10.05
“Entangled Life is a dazzling, vibrant, vision-changing book. Sentence after sentence stopped me short. I ended it wonderstruck at the fungal world and the earth-shaking, hierarchy-breaking implications of Sheldrake's argument.”
— Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland
Merlin is a scientist with the imagination of a poet and a beautiful writer… This is a book that, by the virtue of the power of its writing, shifts your sense of the Human… it will inspire a generation to enter mycology."
— Michael Pollan, author of How to Change Your Mind
The natural world is more fantastic than any fantasy, so long as you have the means to perceive it. This book provides the means."
— Jaron Lanier, author of You Are Not A Gadget
Within 24 hours of finishing “Entangled Life” I had ordered an oyster mushroom-growing kit. I started scrutinizing the lichens that hug the damp concrete in the yard. This book may not be a psychedelic — and unlike Sheldrake, I haven’t dared to consume my copy (yet) — but reading it left me not just moved but altered, eager to disseminate its message of what fungi can do.”
I haven't checked it out yet but the reviews suggest he's illuminating a dimension of our relationship with nature profoundly. His father (Rupert) was a biochemist, and originator of the theory of morphic resonance. A couple of deep thinkers about our Green world, showing how to reconnect…
This is my field, Dennis; the reading, the listening-to, the watching (McFarlane, Sheldrake, Stamets, McKenna et al) , as well as the foraging, cultivating (Shaggy Parasols, Velvet Shanks, oysters, Birch boletes etc. etc.) You might enjoy Stephen Harrod Buhner (Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm), Monica Gagliano (Thus spoke the plant) and Natasha "Planthropocene" Myers and the paintings of Pablo Picasso
"Stephen Harrod Buhner is the senior researcher for the Foundation for Gaian Studies." I hadn't heard of him, but have been writing about the Gaian view sporadically since attending the Gaia Conference at the University of Auckland in 1989. I had been an avid consumer of Lovelock's books before that.
Sue Bradford also was there, and in the aftermath a working group was formed which she & I joined to brainstorm the formation of a new political party on the basis of Gaia. I have a folder of notes from the meetings of that group in the following months.
Eventually that group joined with the residue of the Values Party and a couple of others to form the Green Party, but by then I had been alienated by the tedium induced by discourse with pedestrian leftist mainstreamers pretending to be alternative and had to stop attending those meetings. When they got 7% at the next election I decided to try & be more tolerant…
The bit I liked best was the evidence around distributed intelligence in a brainless network organism. So it's not as if there's no hope for National or Labour – so long as they operate more like network than org or hierarchy…
The brain is a brainless network too. The network does not have a brain, it is a brain. On that note, you may want to ‘meditate’ on the ‘3.5% rule’ that you are so sceptical about.
Hey Wayne, if you are around I totally agree with your views re- the use of the military from the start of the pandemic scare.
In 1987 I was sent to Whenuapiai Air Base to fill-in for a colleague who was on long service leave. I was there when Cyclone Bola wreaked havoc in the Hawkes Bay and Taranaki regions. For the first time I saw the military in action and was very impressed. They were up and running at full throttle in less than 24 hrs. The management of the rescue effort followed by the aftermath clean up was superb. So much so, I applied for a permanent position at Whenuapai and ended up spending nearly 4 years on that base.
Thanks for that link. It seems Dr Miller has transcribed the entire interview, which was done on Skype (sound only) on Thursday morning. I didn't appreciate that TVNZ picked up these interviews.
As for a future Cold War, it is very uncertain. But I don't like the portents. It seems to me the China US relationship will get worse before it gets better. The US doesn't know how to accommodate a rising power, and China seems to be going out of its way to be bellicose.
As for a future Cold War, it is very uncertain. But I don't like the portents.
Can't say I like them either and, to my mind, its got a good chance of being a hot war rather than cold. Especially, as you say, China seems to be going out of its way to be bellicose and hard nosed. They seem to be getting more intransigent on the Indian border and the SCS.
In NZ we need more imagination on this issue.
We need to build up our defence forces so that they're actually capable of defending us and we need to check out existing and possible allies that will stand with us (I'm pretty sure that at least a couple of traditional allies won't).
…we need to check out existing and possible allies that will stand with us (I'm pretty sure that at least a couple of traditional allies won't)
I think we are more likely to have other Asian countries standing with us – or us standing with them. It would seem to me our future is becoming more aligned with Asia both in an economical as well as a geo-political sense than our traditional allies.
I have grave doubts about the over-all sanity of the Brits these days. 🙄
Ron Mark will be the only NZ First MP I will miss. I think he has done the best job of any defence minister in 20 years. Marks has made sure that the NZDF are pandemic ready compared to security guards. As well Marks has ensured operational equipment is being sourced.
From first to last the seaman’s thoughts are very much concerned with his anchors. It is not so much that the anchor is a symbol of hope as that it is the heaviest object that he has to handle on board his ship at sea in the usual routine of his duties. The beginning and the end of every passage are marked distinctly by work about the ship’s anchors. Joseph Conrad
It may be that this anchor denotes the end of the passage.
edit
I think Shane Jones fitted the persona that many ordinary blokes wanted, not one clipped onto the political beltway, a lawyer, professional with theories about everything, but his own man, with experience on the ground etc. That perhaps was the feeling that similar USA punters got from Trump. Now that people have seen this type in action, given them a go, perhaps they will be able to let them go and see a different type of representative is needed to advance our nation's aims and 'make us great again'.
I'm not sure he ever resonated much with anyone really. A lot of folk wanted him to, but he was more beltway selection than dignity of labour, and his rhetorical skills… might be there in Maori, but aren't being quoted in English. Bit of a fugazi really.
Martin does not quite make the grade for me. In saying this she is the next best performer and then Peters.
This election is going to be all about the Labour and National Party. Probably like first past the post days. Televised debate is going to indicate the survival of the minor parties.
I heard Jane Fonda mention this rule to Kim Hill about 20 mins ago:
“There weren’t any campaigns that had failed after they had achieved 3.5% participation during a peak event,” says Chenoweth – a phenomenon she has called the “3.5% rule”. Besides the People Power movement, that included the Singing Revolution in Estonia in the late 1980s and the Rose Revolution in Georgia in the early 2003.
Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, confirms that civil disobedience is not only the moral choice; it is also the most powerful way of shaping world politics – by a long way.
Consider me a sceptic. Protests rarely work nowadays. If the prof is correct, she has measured a critical threshold that transitions a protest movement into a viable political force. We need corroboration, but it would be gamechanger in politics if the rule does get established. All FPP democratic systems would be threatened by the potential.
thinking now of NZ contexts where it might apply. 10,000 people marching in Dunedin stopped the move of the hospital neurology department to Chch (in the context of a campaign). That's 7% of the population.
Clever enough to apply postmodern framing. Perception driven by lack of reality. Is not applying both/and logic stupid? Would be unfair to assent. I bet teachers still can't teach the generic form – merely conforming to convention in teaching the application to maths & computing only.
If you apply the version most seen in physics (Schrodinger's cat) then you need to actually measure the ratio between protests that did change govt policy and those that didn't. The measurement collapses the wave function.
Twenty years into the new millennium is time enough for that testing. My guess is that failure would come in around 95-98% of the total.
2: it's always so damned noisy, with the usual suspects on megaphones yelling the same shit. What do I want? Shut the fuck up for a few minutes, please.
3: The proximity of so many people is disconcerting. I suspect my personal space is measured in light years.
"If Labour's Claytons tax policy gave the finger to those who want progressive taxation, National's Infrastructure Bank seems designed as a deep betrayal of those who value genuine fiscal responsibility.
Labour strategists are thrilled by the far left's negative reaction to Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson's promise to leave the tax system basically as it is.
The Government's big two confirmed there will be no shift away from taxing good things like wages, salaries and profits, to taxing allegedly bad things such as capital gains, inherited wealth, carbon and consumption.
Through a social democrat or environmental lens, John Key and Bill English's 2010 tax switch, which paid for tax cuts on low incomes by increasing taxes on consumption, was to the left of what Labour unveiled on Wednesday.
In fact, Labour unveiled almost nothing at all. Its so-called tax "policy" consisted of just a single measure — the restoration of Helen Clark and Michael Cullen's 39 per cent marginal income tax rate, but only on earnings above $180,000 a year.
Whereas Clark and Cullen risked whacking the top 5 per cent of income earners — those earning the equivalent of $113,366 in today's money — Ardern and Robertson have targeted just the top 2 per cent.
Even Don Brash was more progressive, proposing in 2005 that the 39 per cent rate kick in at $157,468 in today's money. This is not what Labour activists signed up for."
I hate to say it, but I agree with Hooton. Party Vote Green is the answer, as usual.
it doesn't matter if it's pay walled, you still have to link (some people have access). If you quote-google search then you will get the link. It's not that hard 🙂
Hooton lied about the GST increase delivering a tax cut to those on lower incomes – they did cut income taxes, but those on lower incomes would have spent more in GST than they got in reduced income taxes.
Those who had spare income to save/invest benefited from the change. And they are/were not those on lower incomes.
An increase in GST is an increase in a regressive tax.
Hooton's object is never up front. In this instance it is to slip this little whopper under the radar.
Through a social democrat or environmental lens, John Key and Bill English's 2010 tax switch, which paid for tax cuts on low incomes by increasing taxes on consumption, was to the left of what Labour unveiled on Wednesday.
Key and English's GST increases were of course steeply regressive, but Hooton wants his false 'fact' out there muddying the waters of conversations about tax fairness.
I saw that SPC and Stuart….couldn't agree more….complete bollocks of course…..that is the problem with Hooton. He can make a great deal of sense until his pro-National bias kicks in then he leaves reality behind.
Through a social democrat or environmental lens, John Key and Bill English's 2010 tax switch, which paid for tax cuts on low incomes by increasing taxes on consumption, was to the left of what Labour unveiled on Wednesday.
No, it wasn't as it:
Didn't pay for the tax cuts for low incomes – it put the taxes on low incomes up as GST is regressive
Gave the rich an actual tax cut
Increased the deficit as the amount of government income from taxes went down
Hooton actually knows all that and so he must be lying.
"Goldsmith's first strategy to get the numbers right has been to target failed programmes like fees-free tertiary education and KiwiBuild, and the universal Baby Bonus — but even these are small change in the context of his ambitious target.
His second strategy is not so robust — stopping contributions to the Super Fund."
Now that is truly nasty. Goldsmith is well to the right in the National caucus; it will be scary times if he becomes finance minister.
He was nominated by some alt-right populist in Sweden – one of around 300 or so people that have also been nominated. Chances of him winning are pretty much zero.
Laura Leebrick, a manager at Rogue Disposal & Recycling in southern Oregon, is standing on the end of its landfill watching an avalanche of plastic trash pour out of a semitrailer: containers, bags, packaging, strawberry containers, yogurt cups.
None of this plastic will be turned into new plastic things. All of it is buried.
"To me that felt like it was a betrayal of the public trust," she said. "I had been lying to people … unwittingly."
[…]
But it's not valuable, and it never has been. And what's more, the makers of plastic — the nation's largest oil and gas companies — have known this all along, even as they spent millions of dollars telling the American public the opposite.
NPR and PBS Frontline spent months digging into internal industry documents and interviewing top former officials. We found that the industry sold the public on an idea it knew wouldn't work — that the majority of plastic could be, and would be, recycled — all while making billions of dollars selling the world new plastic.
The industry's awareness that recycling wouldn't keep plastic out of landfills and the environment dates to the program's earliest days, we found. "There is serious doubt that [recycling plastic] can ever be made viable on an economic basis," one industry insider wrote in a 1974 speech.
Yet the industry spent millions telling people to recycle, because, as one former top industry insider told NPR, selling recycling sold plastic, even if it wasn't true.
If it isn't recycled it should be burned – at a decent temperature it's no worse than its precursor petroleum. Burying it is just begging it to make its way into the food chain.
It can be done to advantage – Seoul generates electricity from household waste – better than landfilling it. You need a disposal system even if you recycle – some plastics are invariably mixed or contaminated.
As with a lot of such issues, it's a matter of finding a sensible integrated solution – Seoul has a lot of paper trash as well, and burning the mix keeps the temperature in a respectable range. Lack of space means landfill was not an option.
I'm quietly interested in using waste plastic to fire a pottery kiln – there's plenty of it about, and the high temperature burning is a necessary part of another process.
which is used as packaging around tv's, fridges, etc etc. Impact/compression resistant cardboard would provide exactly the same, without the consequential pollution/disposal effects.
The scale of plastic pollution…and its adverse effect on our Earth? Frightening
Further to @Ad (1.5.3) note the emphasis on work, even when referencing those with disabilities. Yet again, lets ignore the highly inconvenient fact there are are group of people with disabilities who will never be able to participate in the paid workforce no matter how much they want to. That's just reality.
But by acknowledging that, their plight will have to be admitted to so lets just not even mention they exist ergo the problem doesn't exist and we don't have to admit how badly the seriously ill and disabled in NZ are treated by all governments, because, not politically palatable.
”Work will set you free” as iron gateway signs announced at certain Nazi WWII Concentration Camps.
Neo liberals similarly misuse “work” in a way that obscures what is really going on in our society.
Maybe, the Covid unemployed newbies will react to the built in sadism of WINZ/MSD with calls for the obvious-increase benefit levels, individualise benefits, drop sanctions, abatement levels, and stand downs.
Really IRD should handle a streamlined income support including a Basic Income. Disband WINZ, and set up a new Social Security Agency for special needs groups-disabled, sick, ACC etc. Base it on no inquisitions, just pay and support citizens with what they reasonably need to have some sort of life.
Next Saturday would have been the election. I need to look at how all of the political parties are polling today. I would like to see a poll for next Saturday for the election which has been redated.
Possibly there are people out there who think there is an election next week. Those who have the election bottle of wine in the fridge will need to wait a bit longer. I reckon I will need a wine or two by election day.
This time 3 years ago I had my exit plan worked out in the event of a 4th-term National Government, as did others I knew, personally and anecdotally, things had become that unbearable. Annoying as NZF have been, it's safe to say Winston's decision literally saved a lot of lives. Citizens should not have to live in genuine fear of the outcome of General Elections.
This week the Government was able to borrow at a negative interest rate for the first time. Ever.
That means the funder of the govt gets to pay a transaction fee for the privilege of lending us their money. Rather nice of the capitalists, eh? "Guys, we got so much spare money we're dead keen to pay you to use it for a few years."
That means there are fund managers out there this week with so few places to put their money and so afraid of the future that they are willing to pay more than $1m for a piece of paper that guarantees they will get $1m back in 20 years time.
And just think of how effed they'd be if the government wasn't willing to do so because they simply don't need to do so. A government can create all the money that it needs.
The NZ government can create money and they can buy stuff with it. Yes, they can even buy stuff from offshore with it. They can do that because that money allows those people offshore to buy product from NZ.
b)they were unable to get it somewhere else or make it themselves
c) the price was right
and then there is the ratio of available of NZD in relation to goods….you can make as many NZD as you like but you cannot create the unlimited goods you hope they represent nor the unlimited desire to hold them.
ALL of our major exports are freely available from a multitude of suppliers
Im sure Boeing and Airbus or Phizer will be falling over themselves to trade their products for NZD (or the wine and cheese they can buy with them)
But think about it in context of the rich person who has so much money and nowhere to spend it. They've got millions and millions of dollars, nowhere to spend it and if they put it in the bank the banks will charge fees on it because they don't have anywhere to put it either.
That's why they're so keen to buy NZ bonds with such a low negative interest rate – because it would cost them more to put it in the bank.
As I say, the government creating money can really fuckup the capitalists as they'd lose their bludging and they'd lose the ability to say, 'see, you need us', because we simply don't.
And the deflation the negative rate is indicating does not bode well for demand for trade in the real economy…indeed it indicates the lack of confidence in the real economy to maintain its functionality.
The bond purchases are no indication of offshore desire for NZD unless the purchasers are from offshore.
No, they're a sign the the wealthy are looking for anyway to protect their money from decreasing as it would upon the open market or even if they just kept it under the mattress.
I'm saying that the government shouldn't be giving them that security.
And it doesn't matter if there's any demand from offshore or not. Chances are that people offshore would still accept it as payment knowing that they could buy product from NZ at any time if the government used it to buy from offshore. The government can spend locally as well and that would, in many cases, be better for the economy and NZers.
indeed it indicates the lack of confidence in the real economy to maintain its functionality.
And government spending can maintain and increase that functionality which, really, is my whole point and they don't need to sell bonds to rich people so as to protect those rich people's wealth to do it.
which takes us back to the beginning….the Gov can do as it wishes with the NZD but that is of little use when most of what we need to maintain our economy (and by extension society) is traded in currencies other than the NZD.
Stuff reports a gathering of Jamie-Lee-Ross supporters in Auckland to march against the lockdown.
At least one busload of them went up from Bethlehem/Tauranga. I haven't noticed too many being restricted or disadvantaged in The Bay area at Level 2. What did Muldoon call them? Rent a crowd"?
Should at least end the misguided view among some (on here) that JLR is the good guy in Botany, simply by not being National. He's signed up to the Q-anon madness, and embraces the far right. Luxon is bad, but not worse.
Fortunately Ross only has another month in the job, and his nasty party will find out their true level of support. Good riddance.
Yes. Muldoon called them a Rent a Crowd but he was lying. They ranged from young students to the elderly and they were genuine. There were plenty of good reasons to protest during the Muldoon era and time proved the protesters were right.
Can't say the same about today's motley crowd in Queen St. If they have bused people to Auckland from other part of the North Island then they're suspect and could be described as a Rent a Crowd.
I'd love to know who's paying for it all, bussing people from all over the place wouldn't be cheap, and I can't see his fb followers doing it unless it's free
Loved the bit about Billy The Kreep getting the quarantine breaker out of prison after seven days. Dumb shit is so thick he didn't know she was eligible for release after serving half of her sentence. Gives some indication of the intellect of his gang of 'protesters'.
Seems helping citizens with generous support payments to avoid prematurely opening up the economy is a winner.
TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada reported zero COVID-19 deaths in the past 24 hours for the first time since March 15, according to public health agency data released late on Friday.
With most provinces easing lockdown restrictions and as schools reopen for in-person classes, Canada’s infections have seen a mild pick-up in recent days. Authorities have been on high alert to avoid fresh outbreaks, and provinces including British Columbia have imposed new curbs to tackle the spread of the virus.
I feel that our international knowledge is low and shows a lack of understanding of the workings in politics elsewhere. The National Library has acted pragmatically and is making room for more NZ books by passing rarely used books to other libraries. That is an indication of a lack in us, and insularity.
Insular and unempathetic, materialistic, possessed by desire for consumerism, superior possessions and lifestyle, sentimentally moved by populist tragedies, valueless about others' plight? NZ'RUs? Brave New World?
Buzz from the Beehive Housing Minister Chris Bishop delivered news – packed with the ingredients to enflame political passions – worthy of supplanting Winston Peters in headline writers’ priorities. He popped up at the post-Cabinet press conference to promise a crackdown on unruly and antisocial state housing tenants. His ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The Reserve Bank is advertising for a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion advisor. The Bank has one mandate – to keep inflation between one and three percent. It has failed in that and is only slowly getting inflation back down to the upper limit. Will it ...
Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency Waka KotahiThe fact that a ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: Gavin Jacobson talks to Thomas Piketty 10 years on from Capital in the 21st CenturyThe SalvoLocal scoop: Green MP’s business being investigated over migrant exploitation claims StuffSteve KilgallonLocal deep-dive: The commercial contractors making money from School ...
It’s a home - but Kāinga Ora tenants accused of “abusing the privilege” may lose it. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government announced a crackdown on Kāinga Ora tenants who were unruly and/or behind on their rent, with Housing Minister Chris Bishop saying a place in a state ...
This is a guest post by Connor Sharp of Surface Light Rail Light rail in Auckland: A way forward sooner than you think With the coup de grâce of Auckland Light Rail (ALR) earlier this year, and the shift of the government’s priorities to roads, roads, and more roads, it ...
Note: As a paid-up Webworm member, I’ve recorded this Webworm as a mini-podcast for you as well. Some of you said you liked this option - so I aim to provide it when I get a chance to record! Read more ...
TL;DR: In my ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Monday, March 18:IKEA is accused of planting big forests in New Zealand to green-wash; REDD-MonitorA City for People takes a well-deserved victory lap over Wellington’s pro-YIMBY District Plan votes; A City for PeopleSteven Anastasiou takes a close look at the sticky ...
Buzz from the Beehive Here’s hoping for a lively post-cabinet press conference when the PM and – perhaps – some of his ministers tell us what was discussed at their meeting today. Until then, Point of Order has precious little Beehive news to report after its latest monitoring of the ...
David Farrar writes – We now have almost all 2023 data in, which has allowed me to update my annual table of how labour went against its promises. This is basically their final report card. The promiseThe result Build 100,000 affordable homes over 10 ...
I’m a bit worried that I’ve started a previous newsletter with the words “just when you think they couldn’t get any worse…” Seems lately that I could begin pretty much every issue with that opening. Such is the nature of our coalition government that they seem to be outdoing each ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. ...
Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and inclusion are offered in daylight, much of our culture ...
Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in an exit interview with Q+A yesterday the Government can and should sustain more debt to invest in infrastructure for future generations. Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 6:36am: Read more ...
Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. It is more than just a happy ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to March 18 include:China’s Foreign Minister visiting Wellington today;A post-cabinet news conference this afternoon; the resumption of Parliament on Tuesday for two weeks before Easter;retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson gives his valedictory speech in Parliament; ...
New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters’s state-of-the-nation speech on Sunday was really a state-of-Winston-First speech. He barely mentioned any of the Government’s key policies and could not even wholly endorse its signature income tax cuts. Instead, he rehearsed all of his complaints about the Ardern Government, including an extraordinary claim ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
“I’ve been internalising a really complicated situation in my head.”When they kept telling us we should wait until we get to know him, were they taking the piss? Was it a case of, if you think this is bad, wait till you get to know the real Christopher, after the ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
.“$10 and a target that bleeds” - Bleeding Targets for Under $10!.Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.This government appears hell-bent on either scrapping life-saving legislation or reintroducing things that - frustrated critics insist - will be dangerous and likely ...
“It hardly strikes me as fair to criticise a government for doing exactly what it said it was going to do. For actually keeping its promises.”THUNDER WAS PLAYING TAG with lightning flashes amongst the distant peaks. Its rolling cadences interrupted by the here-I-come-here-I-go Doppler effect of the occasional passing car. ...
Subversive & Disruptive Technologies: Just as happened with that other great regulator of the masses, the Medieval Church, the advent of a new and hard-to-control technology – the Internet – is weakening the ties that bind. Then, and now, those who enjoy a monopoly on the dissemination of lies, cannot and will ...
Been Here Before: To find the precedents for what this Coalition Government is proposing, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.THE COALITION GOVERNMENT has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. It remains, however, an angry government. It ...
Bob Edlin writes – And what is the world watching today…? The email newsletter from Associated Press which landed in our mailbox early this morning advised: In the news today: The father of a school shooter has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter; prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money case ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is another Green MP on their way out? And are the Greens severely tarnished by another integrity scandal? For the second time in three months, the Green Party has secretly suspended an MP over integrity issues. Mystery is surrounding the party’s decision to ...
For the last few years, the Green Party has been the party that has managed to avoid the plague of multiple scandals that have beleaguered other political parties. It appears that their luck has run out with a second scandal which, unfortunately for them, coincided with Golraz Ghahraman, the focus ...
TL;DR: The six newsey things that stood out to me as of 6:46am on Saturday, March 16.Andy Foster has accidentally allowed a Labour/Green amendment to cut road user chargers for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which the Government might accept; NZ HeraldThomas CoughlanSimeon Brown has rejected a plea from Westport ...
What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
TL;DR:Shaun Baker on Wynyard Quarter's transformation. Magdalene Taylor on the problem with smart phones. How private equity are now all over reinsurance. Dylan Cleaver on rugby and CTE. Emily Atkin on ‘Big Meat’ looking like ‘Big Oil’.Bernard’s six-stack of substacks at 6pm on March 15Photo by Jeppe Hove Jensen ...
Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it: We want our country to be a ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation : The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop:Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
Every year, in the Budget, Parliament forks out money to government agencies to do certain things. And every year, as part of the annual review cycle, those agencies are meant to report on whether they have done the things Parliament gave them that money for. Agencies which consistently fail to ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – Recent events in American universities point to an underlying crisis of coherent thinking, an issue that increasingly affects the progressive left across the Western world. This of course is nothing new as anyone who can either remember or has read of the late ...
The thing about life’s little victories is that they can be followed by a defeat.Reader Darryl told me on Monday night:Test again Dave. My “head cold” last week became COVID within 24 hours, and is still with me. I hear the new variants take a bit longer to show up ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Angus Deaton on rethinking his economics IMFLocal scoop: The people behind Tamarind, the firm that left a $500m cleanup bill for taxpayers at Taranaki’s Tui oil well, are back operating in Taranaki under a different company name. Jonathan ...
Normally when we talk about accessing public transport it’s about improving how easy it is to get to, such as how easy is it to cross roads in a station/stop’s walking catchment, is it possible to cycle to safely, do bus connections work, or even if are there new routes/connections ...
Politicians are not renowned for telling the truth. Some tell us things that are verifiably not true. They offer statements that omit critical pieces of information. Gloss over risks, preferring to offer the best case scenario.Some not truths are quite small, others amusing in their transparency. There are those repeated ...
The pressure is mounting on the Government as it finalises its Budget Policy Statement, but yet more predicted revenue ‘goes missing’. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Climate Commission has delivered another funding blow to the National-ACT-NZ First coalition Government’s tax-cutting plans, potentially carving $1.4 billion off the ‘climate ...
The Government now faces the prospect of having to watch another tax raise the price of petrol when, only six days ago, it abolished the Auckland Regional Fuel tax. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon argued that the regional fuel tax imposed costs on lower-income people with less fuel-efficient vehicles and that ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
The government’s attack on Māori health this week is committing tangata-whenua to a premature death, says Te Pāti Māori. “The government have begun their onslaught on Māori health with the abolishment of the Māori Health Authority and smokefree laws in the same day” said health spokesperson and co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. ...
Today marks a tragic milestone for New Zealanders as the Coalition Government side with big tobacco to repeal the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Act 2022, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins and Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
This year’s Pacific Language Weeks celebrate regional unity and the contribution of Pacific communities to New Zealand culture, says Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti. Dr Reti announced dates for the 2024 Pacific Language Weeks during a visit to the Pasifika festival in Auckland today and says there’s so ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
The long-running Wellington music festival is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness and not enough on the Homegrown-ness.There is something about Homegrown that’s difficult to place. A barely perceptible-ness. Like feeling a ghost is watching you from the corner of the room but when you look, there’s nothing there. ...
The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor reveals that fewer New Zealanders believe crime / law and order is one of the top issues facing our country. In 2018, Ipsos New Zealand started tracking the key issues facing New Zealand. In this wave ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Budgets and Government, Grattan Institute Australia’s political donations rules are woefully inadequate, but donations reform is finally on the agenda. The federal government has signalled its interest in reform and will soon begin briefing MPs on its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University Naiyana Somchitkaeo/Shutterstock A recent study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has linked microplastics with risk to human health. The study ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University Global climate records were shattered in 2023, from air and sea temperatures to sea-level rise and sea-ice extent. Scores of countries recorded their hottest year ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a teacher explains why he and his partner are in frugal mode – and how they’re making it work. Gender: Male Age: 35Ethnicity: Pākehā Role: I am an intermediate school teacher and my partner is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bendall, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University Binge Mary & George, the new British television drama series, depicts the real-life story of Mary Villiers and her son George, and their social climbing at the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Nassios, Associate Professor, Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University This article is part of The Conversation’s series examining the housing crisis. Read the other articles in the series here. Australian state and federal governments spend money in many ways to ...
The finance minister is denying that there’s a $5.6b shortfall in paying for the government’s campaign promises, including tax cuts. At his post-cabinet press conference yesterday, the PM refused to rule out new taxes to pay for the cuts, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s ...
Kāinga Ora tenants abused by their neighbours are doubting the government's crackdown on disruptive tenants will make a difference on their behaviour. ...
Kāinga Ora is New Zealand’s biggest residential landlord, housing more than 180,000 vulnerable people in more than 67,000 properties. Yesterday the government announced a crackdown on its tenants who fall behind on rent. One longtime Kāinga Ora tenant shares her experience.For 18 years I lived in a 1960s standalone ...
Why does this myth persist, and what’s the real reason our skin is suffering?It’s one of the biggest international grievances New Zealanders hold, up there with the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and 1981’s underarm incident. We’re quick to tell international travellers that the world’s pollution led to the ...
Auckland Council is opposing a fast-track development backed by Sir John Kirwan and Spark NZ, because it doesn’t meet stringent new climate adaptation requirements The post Surf-data centre faces new 3.8C climate warming rules appeared first on Newsroom. ...
When the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act was introduced in 2009 it was firmly targeted at gangs and drugs. The legislation means police no longer need a conviction to seize assets that criminals can’t prove were paid for legitimately, as long as their alleged offences are punishable by more than a ...
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Bob’s relationship with certain members of Lincoln’s academic staff continued to deteriorate in the 1990s. Others supported him publicly, though articles such as Roland Clark’s 1993 piece in Growing Today cannot have pleased the university management. Clark wrote that Bob was selling onions from the Biological Husbandry Unit to a ...
SailGP’s races feature in-your-face action, with agile, hydro-foiling catamarans tacking and jibing for the title over several days. However, public comments ahead of the global series’ return to New Zealand have left this past year’s controversy in the shadows, as a key appointment attracts criticism from dolphin advocates. A year ...
Opinion: We are fast approaching a fundamental change in prisons. As the number of people on custodial remand looks set to overtake the number of sentenced prisoners, the main function of prisons in New Zealand may become incarcerating un-sentenced people who may not be guilty of offending. We have already ...
A huge seven months lies in store for the White Ferns, beginning this week with the visit of England and culminating with the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in September and October. Starting on Tuesday in Dunedin, the world ranked No. 2 visitors will play five T20s and three ODIs, ...
Opinion: In a move that has shocked road safety advocates across the country, the new Minister of Transport, Simeon Brown, is poised to abandon the previous government’s speed limit reduction policy, particularly around schools. Even more alarmingly, he wants school speed limits to be variable rather than full-time, arguing ...
The letters, which were published last week, were addressed to Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) Chairperson Megawati Sukarnoputri, National Democrat Party (NasDem) Chairperson Surya Paloh, National Awakening Party (PKB) Chairperson Muhaimin Iskandar, Justice and Prosperity Party (PKS) President Ahmad Syaikhu and United Development Party (PPP) Chairperson Muhammad Mardiono. In ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
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The government says it still intends to deliver tax cuts by July, but will not lock them in until they have got them past their coalition partners. ...
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Apologies for repeating this but it just keeps getting repeated doesn't it…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/122741361/this-just-cannot-happen-95-billion-at-risk-as-horticulture-sector-struggles-to-fill-25anhour-jobs
These business people need to grow up and play by market rules. Put the wages up. Try $30 hour, or $35 hour, or heaven forbid $40 hour. See what happens. They are happy to take advantage of market conditions when it works in their favour, but when it works against them its all wah wah wah cry to nanny state. Pathetic children.
The bullshit is thick in the air. Workers have no sympathy for them. They are authors of their own demise.
I wish they would stfu – tired of hearing and reading this issue.
It is the most bullshit issue in the land
There is sympathy to be had for them (and theirs)..they will be victims of the dysfunctional model as much as the rest of us
It's a dysfunctional model that they've been championing for 40 years, so, no sympathy for them.
'They' are us….the model has been supported by everyone in one form or another.
Not all of us have been championing capitalism.
if you read what I wrote you will note I said 'supporting in one form or another'….not championing.
Have you always bought local?seasonal?
Are you are user of the health system?
Do you make your purchasing decisions on price?
Do you only use/consume that which you can make yourself?
Have you ever had credit, or expected a return on savings?
The problem is systemic, and unless you are a hermit living in a cave somewhere your actions/decisions support it even if you ignore political action.
We can (justifiably) complain about the distribution of that which we produce but not how much we demand by our actions.
Did you notice that the majority of people actually didn't want the Rogernomic adjustments that brought in the present model of capitalism?
There's a point where have to accept that the only reason why we have the system that we have is because our democratically elected officials went against our wishes and that they're still doing it.
Yes, we support the system that's in place but that's because have no choice because we're not a democratic country and then we get used to it.
Rogernomics did not create the demand (it did impact the distribution) and to state that we have no choice highlights the systemic nature….there is choice ,just not one we are prepared to take.
Did you notice that the majority of people actually didn't want the Rogernomic adjustments that brought in the present model of capitalism?
No we didn't notice that. We did notice, however, that they were given a second term.
I still remember it. Most did not want the Rogernomic reforms. 4th Labour's second term came about because people still didn't trust National and still didn't truly appreciate just what Labour were up to.
4th National got in because they implied, pretty heavily, that they were going to undo Rogernomics and then they went harder.
If we didn't have FPP in 1993 National would have been out but all the wasted votes ensured that they got back in.
Then we went to our first MMP election and people voted in NZFirst because they implied that they were going to go with Labour and would undo the reforms. Except, once they got in, they went with National. They did slow National down somewhat but the reforms continued.
It goes on. Our democratic government is littered with it not doing what the people wanted and voting for change achieving no change at all.
We are not a democracy, never have been and, until we take power from government and govern ourselves, we never will be.
Completely agree. They offer less than $4/h more than the living wage (which is the absolute minimum needed for a basic life in nz) and think workers should be flocking to them. Pay more!
That $25.00 per hour is probably based on the bin rate certainly not achievable by all
It's not just the hourly rates. I went to one of the hiring sites out of curiosity and the expectation seemed to be 60 hours plus a week and accommodation that you could pay for out of the minimum wages. Plus all of these people desperately wanting labour basically had a job ad that said jobs available contact XYZ. No mention of location type of work estimated starting date hourly rate etc just nothing.
It has also as far as I can see suffered from the outsourcing model. Once the individual grower paid the workers direct and they organised it around an area. Now it is a lot of corporate orchards, gangmasters etc and this overhead has to be paid for out of the picker wages essentially.
Plus the fruit picking looks like an industry that has invested zero in any form of improvement apart from maybe espaliered apple trees. Rather than people running around with huge carrying weights – dropping fruit onto soft touch collecting services temporary walk ways – there must be plenty of ideas out there.
And some of these areas could well invest in all of the year multi skilled workforces that went from pruning to picking etc etc.
Maybe to start with a backstop arrangement for an area through maybe welfare that gave permanent employment with the individual growers taking on paying into the scheme and training according to their needs. Then gradually turning the worker co operative over to the workers in an area.
Actually the growers could design such a scheme for themselves to give better employment and maybe get a little support to implement. Anything would be better than the current whining which is moving from pruning to calving to picking etc
Moderately surprised they still employ pickers. Thinning is a bit of an art, but picking isn't so much.
Nut harvesters just shake the tree. No reason that couldn't be adapted to a hopper system.
Bruising fruit might be a problem, but possibly not enough to offset the productivity increase from one driver.
Then there's coffee harvesting.
Apple picking More Apple
I have NFI what happened to the Kiwifruit picker. But you'd think, after more than 10 years, that there'd be some around by now.
Picking by hand is an endangered occupation – as it should be.
How's that's $25/hour worked out?
Because last time I saw this in the papers it was a contract rate per very large container of apples picked. Somebody not used to it isn't going to make minimum wage no matter how hard they work.
And, being contract, they then have to work out their taxes and expenses and other legal stuff. Once that happens the minimum wage is far gone.
That wage depends on how much per box the global market for our horticulture products is prepared to pay for them.
We're a low-wage, low-productivity, low R&D economy. Have been for two centuries.
Many of our horticultural lines do make global margins. But under our model we're always going to need low wage workers to harvest our commodity lines.
No, we used to do serious R&D. As I said a few weeks ago – HMS Achilles had NZ developed RADAR installed on it. It just never got the support that it needed to become successful in developing product lines. Too much focus on low pay, low return farming.
Then it can only be said that its time to dump that failed model.
We did a bit, and that era lasted about 20 years.
I don't see any party likely to get into Parliament that will turn us into a high-tech, high productivity, low-mass, high wage economy.
Neither do I despite the fact that becoming a high tech economy is what we need to do.
"… becoming a high tech economy is what we need to do."
Agree. I've always had the idea that cap. gains be applied for houses but offset with tax incentives for R&D
True. I recall teaching in a school that looked at a NZ designed colour computer system in the 80s. Killed by the Apple 2e which was offered in bulk at prices NZ product couldn't compete with.
But the NZ designed computer was streets ahead at that time.
If that's the case then the income has to be allocated not as direct wages but through the 'social wage' (free at the point of use healthcare, tertiary education, subsidised state-built housing … whatever). It will still have to be paid for – and pretty much by the same sorts of people as those who are offering low wages. The very definition of a free lunch is when the brutalities of 'market discipline' get imposed on one group, while another escapes them.
It's a shame there wasn't any joined-up thinking there.
Massive rent increases, the product of allowing capital to inflate our property markets, means workers would make a net loss if they stayed cheap and cheerful.
So, fix it, government, or watch the fruit rot.
I'd prefer to see orchardists invest in robotic harvesting. Get rid of low wage workers for horticulture as much as possible.
We're getting into it, but uptake is slow.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/robotic-apple-picker-takes-over-hawkes-bay-fruit-harvest-in-world-first
Every job that can be done by robot should be done by robot. That's pretty much all the low wage jobs gone.
Question: Why are business people still building retail stores? Haven't they heard of the internet?
Now, what do we replace it with?
My suggestion is going full R&D with a full 25% of the working age population in it. Of course, that would mean making education free (again) and that government would be pushing massive amounts into that R&D so that we even end up with robotic manufacturing from our own resources.
It's lovely as a free floating idea, but we don't have the commercial culture that will do that. Regrettably.
Our university robotics and mechatronics courses are full to the gills, but there's limited opportunities for those graduates here. There are more than there use to be.
Even our most advanced companies with some success in this field, like Dunedin's Scott Technologies, got bought out.
And that is why the government should be stepping in. Make that R&D happen. It would develop our economy so that we were competitive and it would develop our local talent.
All our successful tech companies are as the capitalists strive for an ever greater oligarchy and less competition.
It's also proof that the government needs to ban offshore sales and/or stamp harder on anti-competitive practices such as buying up the competition.
Like a lot of other automation projects, unless the grower is the IT guy, he's held to ransom by them, so no net gain.
One of the things they tried at Sealord back in the day was a waterknife – a bit like a laser cutter, but for filleting fish. It wasn’t a bad idea as such, but it needed constant adjustment to get decent yield, and the IT cost of that meant they really had no gain over manual filleters. Could’ve worked if there were ten or so waterknives in the area to justify a pair of full time techs.
Much filleting is done by machine these days, especially in farmed fish. Uses robotic mechnical blades, the best machines consistently give higher fillet yield than the best manual filleters.
If you go to a fish processing factory in Norway (I’ve been to a few) – high degree of automation with people doing a lot of checking and maintenance, rather than bulk manual work. They all get a high quality free lunch, high wages and moderate hours etc. The cars in the carpark are of high quality and the profits made by the companies are high.
Go to a comparable factory in NZ (also been to a few) – lots of people doing manual work, old bombs of cars in the carparks, lots of staff needing dental work and earning the absolute bare minimum with no other benefits. Company profits are variable but certainly not consistently higher than in Norway.
The efficiency of automated filleting has much to do with a standardized feedstock, so it's a natural fit for aquaculture – up to a point.
Before NZ is ready for comparable automation it needs a relative abundance of capable engineers – we don't have them.
The poverty of our workers is more to do with greed and incompetence higher up than the relative efficiency of filleting machinery – manual filleters continue to build skill and rate for years, so a well run bare space factory can compete quite well with an overcapitalised machine heavy space – a lesson Detroit is still losing money from failing to learn in autoassembly.
NZ churns out fillet block when, were our fisheries even vaguely competent, they'd produce a greater proportion of higher value cuts. But it's a colonial fishery – it basically doesn't support the local market at all, so it struggles to test market anything that isn't as basic as dirt. Our per kilo returns are rubbish, and per kilo of wild biomass they are execrable.
You can't build a valid quality marque running slave ships – but our companies are dumb enough to try, and our regulators ineffectual enough to let them.
The other angle to this exploitation is WINZ/MSD need to drop stand downs, sanctions and abatement rates, so NZers can move seamlessly between work and income support.
Dropping the inquisitions, providing travel and accom assistance, along with living wage, would likely see all the pickers these clowns would ever need become available for seasonal work.
What a great practical and realistic line to this thread. Good ideas. I suggest that people copy it and look at it regularly for an example of how much better NZ could be if we had participatory democracy, with people with knowledge and desire for a prosperous, enterprising country where we put our heads and muscles together for the good of a well-run country that made provision for all at their various levels.
Ad does say 'But under our model we're always going to need low wage workers to harvest our commodity lines.' So as AB suggests along with the others ideas, we need some better thought out ways. I think that is the trouble – neolib is like rote learning, it's learn and follow – like a cult really.
Well when people lose their jobs they are told it is an opportunity for them to do some thing different and BTW don't expect any government support.
Shouldn't these employers face the same barrage of advice?
But These employers are wanting student loan reductions, visa's issued, wanting quarantine used (if they say they want to pay for that then pay higher wages) plus a photo of two paid! managers. Anything but looking at themselves
Labour has just released its welfare policy and it includes a good lowering of abatement rates. As you asked for.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA2009/S00104/labour-helps-families-get-ahead.htm
The headings look good Ad, I hope the content provides a practical level of help – real social investment, not like National's banner waving, for the business approach mainly.
Our Plan to Get New Zealand Working – National Party
http://www.national.org.nz › our-plan-to-get-new-zealand-working
Jul 9, 2020 – And we developed the social investment, or actuarial approach, to help analyse which types of government spending and investment will in fact …
Honestly Labour's announcements could and should have been implemented already.
They are not earth shatteringly bold, shall we say.
And she hasn't answered the core question of benefit levels.
The Green Party policy is much stronger here.
Vote Green if you want any real welfare reform and improvement. Labour has shown almost no interest in making any material changes in their first term – ignoring almost everything the WEAG recommended.
In 1977 I did apple packing and I could earn $100 a week for 40 hours.
What is that in today's money?
800-900 bucks a week. But was that in the hand or after tax?
In the hand.
I would get a BNZ cash check on a Friday and I would need to take it to the bank before 4 pm closing to cash it. No weekend opening of banks then.
Thanks for the amount to those who replied.
Wages of $100.00 in quarter 3 of 1977 = $971.88 in quarter 2 of 2020
https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator
Since when has 25 bucks an hour been bad money for a labouring job?
when you are on contract and have to pay your own acc levies and other associated self employment costs$ 25 per hour wont be $25 per hour. its a bullshit headline. and you will only get that rate IF you are very good at the job, and work flat out.
Pretty sure fruit pickers don't have to pay their own ACC levies etc.
But it is a piece-work rate, so only the fastest pickers working the best conditions can get that rate. Slower workers, or if you're picking trees that have already been picked once, you won't be able to achieve that hourly rate.
"How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, & Shape Our Futures" – Kim Hill interviews the author this morning at 10.05
“Entangled Life is a dazzling, vibrant, vision-changing book. Sentence after sentence stopped me short. I ended it wonderstruck at the fungal world and the earth-shaking, hierarchy-breaking implications of Sheldrake's argument.”
— Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland
Merlin is a scientist with the imagination of a poet and a beautiful writer… This is a book that, by the virtue of the power of its writing, shifts your sense of the Human… it will inspire a generation to enter mycology."
— Michael Pollan, author of How to Change Your Mind
The natural world is more fantastic than any fantasy, so long as you have the means to perceive it. This book provides the means."
— Jaron Lanier, author of You Are Not A Gadget
Within 24 hours of finishing “Entangled Life” I had ordered an oyster mushroom-growing kit. I started scrutinizing the lichens that hug the damp concrete in the yard. This book may not be a psychedelic — and unlike Sheldrake, I haven’t dared to consume my copy (yet) — but reading it left me not just moved but altered, eager to disseminate its message of what fungi can do.”
— Jennifer Szalai, THE NEW YORK TIMES
https://www.merlinsheldrake.com/
I haven't checked it out yet but the reviews suggest he's illuminating a dimension of our relationship with nature profoundly. His father (Rupert) was a biochemist, and originator of the theory of morphic resonance. A couple of deep thinkers about our Green world, showing how to reconnect…
This is my field, Dennis; the reading, the listening-to, the watching (McFarlane, Sheldrake, Stamets, McKenna et al) , as well as the foraging, cultivating (Shaggy Parasols, Velvet Shanks, oysters, Birch boletes etc. etc.) You might enjoy Stephen Harrod Buhner (Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm), Monica Gagliano (Thus spoke the plant) and Natasha "Planthropocene" Myers and the paintings of Pablo Picasso
"Stephen Harrod Buhner is the senior researcher for the Foundation for Gaian Studies." I hadn't heard of him, but have been writing about the Gaian view sporadically since attending the Gaia Conference at the University of Auckland in 1989. I had been an avid consumer of Lovelock's books before that.
Sue Bradford also was there, and in the aftermath a working group was formed which she & I joined to brainstorm the formation of a new political party on the basis of Gaia. I have a folder of notes from the meetings of that group in the following months.
Eventually that group joined with the residue of the Values Party and a couple of others to form the Green Party, but by then I had been alienated by the tedium induced by discourse with pedestrian leftist mainstreamers pretending to be alternative and had to stop attending those meetings. When they got 7% at the next election I decided to try & be more tolerant…
Merlin Sheldrake on Kim Hill RNZ this morning. What a wonderful name!
An excellent interview.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/20200912
The bit I liked best was the evidence around distributed intelligence in a brainless network organism. So it's not as if there's no hope for National or Labour – so long as they operate more like network than org or hierarchy…
that was my favourite bit too. Time to get past our big brain (but obv not quite big enough) bias.
The brain is a brainless network too. The network does not have a brain, it is a brain. On that note, you may want to ‘meditate’ on the ‘3.5% rule’ that you are so sceptical about.
And the eating!
Hey Wayne, if you are around I totally agree with your views re- the use of the military from the start of the pandemic scare.
In 1987 I was sent to Whenuapiai Air Base to fill-in for a colleague who was on long service leave. I was there when Cyclone Bola wreaked havoc in the Hawkes Bay and Taranaki regions. For the first time I saw the military in action and was very impressed. They were up and running at full throttle in less than 24 hrs. The management of the rescue effort followed by the aftermath clean up was superb. So much so, I applied for a permanent position at Whenuapai and ended up spending nearly 4 years on that base.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/government-way-too-slow-in-using-nzdf-assist-covid-19-ex-defence-minister-says
Hi Anne,
Thanks for that link. It seems Dr Miller has transcribed the entire interview, which was done on Skype (sound only) on Thursday morning. I didn't appreciate that TVNZ picked up these interviews.
As for a future Cold War, it is very uncertain. But I don't like the portents. It seems to me the China US relationship will get worse before it gets better. The US doesn't know how to accommodate a rising power, and China seems to be going out of its way to be bellicose.
In NZ we need more imagination on this issue.
Can't say I like them either and, to my mind, its got a good chance of being a hot war rather than cold. Especially, as you say, China seems to be going out of its way to be bellicose and hard nosed. They seem to be getting more intransigent on the Indian border and the SCS.
We need to build up our defence forces so that they're actually capable of defending us and we need to check out existing and possible allies that will stand with us (I'm pretty sure that at least a couple of traditional allies won't).
I think we are more likely to have other Asian countries standing with us – or us standing with them. It would seem to me our future is becoming more aligned with Asia both in an economical as well as a geo-political sense than our traditional allies.
I have grave doubts about the over-all sanity of the Brits these days. 🙄
Ron Mark will be the only NZ First MP I will miss. I think he has done the best job of any defence minister in 20 years. Marks has made sure that the NZDF are pandemic ready compared to security guards. As well Marks has ensured operational equipment is being sourced.
Tracy Martin has been more competent than most ministers as well.
But I’d never write NZF off in elections, even if they have burdened themselves with the Shane Jones anchor.
From first to last the seaman’s thoughts are very much concerned with his anchors. It is not so much that the anchor is a symbol of hope as that it is the heaviest object that he has to handle on board his ship at sea in the usual routine of his duties. The beginning and the end of every passage are marked distinctly by work about the ship’s anchors. Joseph Conrad
It may be that this anchor denotes the end of the passage.
edit
I think Shane Jones fitted the persona that many ordinary blokes wanted, not one clipped onto the political beltway, a lawyer, professional with theories about everything, but his own man, with experience on the ground etc. That perhaps was the feeling that similar USA punters got from Trump. Now that people have seen this type in action, given them a go, perhaps they will be able to let them go and see a different type of representative is needed to advance our nation's aims and 'make us great again'.
I'm not sure he ever resonated much with anyone really. A lot of folk wanted him to, but he was more beltway selection than dignity of labour, and his rhetorical skills… might be there in Maori, but aren't being quoted in English. Bit of a fugazi really.
So eloquent re the anchor. The sharks are circling. Marooned out at sea another 4 weeks.
Watch this space, will NZF be rescued?
Martin does not quite make the grade for me. In saying this she is the next best performer and then Peters.
This election is going to be all about the Labour and National Party. Probably like first past the post days. Televised debate is going to indicate the survival of the minor parties.
I heard Jane Fonda mention this rule to Kim Hill about 20 mins ago:
Consider me a sceptic. Protests rarely work nowadays. If the prof is correct, she has measured a critical threshold that transitions a protest movement into a viable political force. We need corroboration, but it would be gamechanger in politics if the rule does get established. All FPP democratic systems would be threatened by the potential.
It's one of the keys to XR's strategy. I wrote a post about the theory in 2019
https://thestandard.org.nz/another-world-is-possible/
thinking now of NZ contexts where it might apply. 10,000 people marching in Dunedin stopped the move of the hospital neurology department to Chch (in the context of a campaign). That's 7% of the population.
We've had a few good wins from the streets over the last three decades.
Yes, but if you ignore the occasions on which protests do work, then they rarely work.
lol, can't tell if you are being clever or stupid there.
Clever enough to apply postmodern framing. Perception driven by lack of reality. Is not applying both/and logic stupid? Would be unfair to assent. I bet teachers still can't teach the generic form – merely conforming to convention in teaching the application to maths & computing only.
If you apply the version most seen in physics (Schrodinger's cat) then you need to actually measure the ratio between protests that did change govt policy and those that didn't. The measurement collapses the wave function.
Twenty years into the new millennium is time enough for that testing. My guess is that failure would come in around 95-98% of the total.
Your writing Dennis, often reminds of a fictional headstone from one of those Brian Edwards tiny books…
”Here lies a defeatist-he predicted it would end this way…”
The wins from the street are seldom but they are great fun win or lose, and sometimes you win and it makes it all worth it.
I fucking hate marching.
1: it's walking. Never a fan.
2: it's always so damned noisy, with the usual suspects on megaphones yelling the same shit. What do I want? Shut the fuck up for a few minutes, please.
3: The proximity of so many people is disconcerting. I suspect my personal space is measured in light years.
Still, has to be done every so often.
The left's Statler and Waldorf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14njUwJUg1I
There might be a passing resemblance.
35 days
Test from iPhone, desktop view
reply from same
reply from mobile view
Test iPhone desktop
I've had alot of trouble with mobile, gave to switch to desktop view to read some posts and reply hasn't worked most of the time. Samsung A20
have you checked since late morning today? Lynn did some tinkering and it seems to be working again (maybe not on a tablet).
This is an excerpt from Hooton's latest effort:
"If Labour's Claytons tax policy gave the finger to those who want progressive taxation, National's Infrastructure Bank seems designed as a deep betrayal of those who value genuine fiscal responsibility.
Labour strategists are thrilled by the far left's negative reaction to Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson's promise to leave the tax system basically as it is.
The Government's big two confirmed there will be no shift away from taxing good things like wages, salaries and profits, to taxing allegedly bad things such as capital gains, inherited wealth, carbon and consumption.
Through a social democrat or environmental lens, John Key and Bill English's 2010 tax switch, which paid for tax cuts on low incomes by increasing taxes on consumption, was to the left of what Labour unveiled on Wednesday.
In fact, Labour unveiled almost nothing at all. Its so-called tax "policy" consisted of just a single measure — the restoration of Helen Clark and Michael Cullen's 39 per cent marginal income tax rate, but only on earnings above $180,000 a year.
Whereas Clark and Cullen risked whacking the top 5 per cent of income earners — those earning the equivalent of $113,366 in today's money — Ardern and Robertson have targeted just the top 2 per cent.
Even Don Brash was more progressive, proposing in 2005 that the 39 per cent rate kick in at $157,468 in today's money. This is not what Labour activists signed up for."
I hate to say it, but I agree with Hooton. Party Vote Green is the answer, as usual.
please link, everytime. Mods are getting grumpy. If you can cut and past then you can link.
by which I mean please provide a link now.
Weka-can't sorry.
It is paywalled and sent to me by a friend via email with no link address. It is dated/appeared on 11 September and I think Hooton writes for the NBR.
it doesn't matter if it's pay walled, you still have to link (some people have access). If you quote-google search then you will get the link. It's not that hard 🙂
Understood…will do that next time.
thanks, it will be much appreciated.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12363880
Hooton lied about the GST increase delivering a tax cut to those on lower incomes – they did cut income taxes, but those on lower incomes would have spent more in GST than they got in reduced income taxes.
Those who had spare income to save/invest benefited from the change. And they are/were not those on lower incomes.
An increase in GST is an increase in a regressive tax.
Agree SPC…see below
"Hooton lied"
Petty much describes it.
The number of people I argued with explaining that the tax cut value was less than the increase in GST paid, but hey, vote National anyway.
Hooton's object is never up front. In this instance it is to slip this little whopper under the radar.
Through a social democrat or environmental lens, John Key and Bill English's 2010 tax switch, which paid for tax cuts on low incomes by increasing taxes on consumption, was to the left of what Labour unveiled on Wednesday.
Key and English's GST increases were of course steeply regressive, but Hooton wants his false 'fact' out there muddying the waters of conversations about tax fairness.
I saw that SPC and Stuart….couldn't agree more….complete bollocks of course…..that is the problem with Hooton. He can make a great deal of sense until his pro-National bias kicks in then he leaves reality behind.
No, it wasn't as it:
Hooton actually knows all that and so he must be lying.
True.
Also from Hooton:
"Goldsmith's first strategy to get the numbers right has been to target failed programmes like fees-free tertiary education and KiwiBuild, and the universal Baby Bonus — but even these are small change in the context of his ambitious target.
His second strategy is not so robust — stopping contributions to the Super Fund."
Now that is truly nasty. Goldsmith is well to the right in the National caucus; it will be scary times if he becomes finance minister.
Meanwhile, in the Idiocracy..
https://twitter.com/ryanbeckwith/status/1304364238815797249
there's a B missing.
Why is the LE there?
I'm pretty sure that lots of people were nominated – if he actually got it is the more important aspect.
He was nominated by some alt-right populist in Sweden – one of around 300 or so people that have also been nominated. Chances of him winning are pretty much zero.
Norwegian, not Swedish.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2020/09/us-president-donald-trump-nominated-for-nobel-peace-prize-by-norwegian-lawmaker.html
Close enough
I'd give Trump the Nobel Peace Prize if he left the Whitehouse tomorrow.
Surprise surprise, big oil lies.
Laura Leebrick, a manager at Rogue Disposal & Recycling in southern Oregon, is standing on the end of its landfill watching an avalanche of plastic trash pour out of a semitrailer: containers, bags, packaging, strawberry containers, yogurt cups.
None of this plastic will be turned into new plastic things. All of it is buried.
"To me that felt like it was a betrayal of the public trust," she said. "I had been lying to people … unwittingly."
[…]
But it's not valuable, and it never has been. And what's more, the makers of plastic — the nation's largest oil and gas companies — have known this all along, even as they spent millions of dollars telling the American public the opposite.
NPR and PBS Frontline spent months digging into internal industry documents and interviewing top former officials. We found that the industry sold the public on an idea it knew wouldn't work — that the majority of plastic could be, and would be, recycled — all while making billions of dollars selling the world new plastic.
The industry's awareness that recycling wouldn't keep plastic out of landfills and the environment dates to the program's earliest days, we found. "There is serious doubt that [recycling plastic] can ever be made viable on an economic basis," one industry insider wrote in a 1974 speech.
Yet the industry spent millions telling people to recycle, because, as one former top industry insider told NPR, selling recycling sold plastic, even if it wasn't true.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled
Recycling is always viable on an economic basis. Its just not always viable on a financial one especially when the finances have been screwed with.
If it isn't recycled it should be burned – at a decent temperature it's no worse than its precursor petroleum. Burying it is just begging it to make its way into the food chain.
Yes, burning it at such a temperature is actually expensive.
And thus we have proof of the unregulated market failing again as the costs were not properly applied which results in poor management of resources.
National, and Labour, go on about how red tape costs but getting rid of those costs is what brings about market failure.
It can be done to advantage – Seoul generates electricity from household waste – better than landfilling it. You need a disposal system even if you recycle – some plastics are invariably mixed or contaminated.
https://www.bettermeetsreality.com/pros-cons-of-burning-incinerating-plastic/
As with a lot of such issues, it's a matter of finding a sensible integrated solution – Seoul has a lot of paper trash as well, and burning the mix keeps the temperature in a respectable range. Lack of space means landfill was not an option.
I'm quietly interested in using waste plastic to fire a pottery kiln – there's plenty of it about, and the high temperature burning is a necessary part of another process.
Indeed…kinda unsurprising the similarity to Big Tobacco's lies and denialism, when they KNEW for years…
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Tobacco_smoking#Dirty_tricks_played_by_cigarette_manufacturers
Anyway, back to plastic and Big Oil. Polystyrene is one of my particular hates. Here is a toxic byproduct of Big Oil ,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polystyrene#Non-biodegradable
which is used as packaging around tv's, fridges, etc etc. Impact/compression resistant cardboard would provide exactly the same, without the consequential pollution/disposal effects.
The scale of plastic pollution…and its adverse effect on our Earth? Frightening
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/06/plastic-planet-waste-pollution-trash-crisis/
(on another..liked your Suicidal Tendencies vid…not seen that one. Know some of their Tracks. Back in the Day…: )
Further to @Ad (1.5.3) note the emphasis on work, even when referencing those with disabilities. Yet again, lets ignore the highly inconvenient fact there are are group of people with disabilities who will never be able to participate in the paid workforce no matter how much they want to. That's just reality.
But by acknowledging that, their plight will have to be admitted to so lets just not even mention they exist ergo the problem doesn't exist and we don't have to admit how badly the seriously ill and disabled in NZ are treated by all governments, because, not politically palatable.
”Work will set you free” as iron gateway signs announced at certain Nazi WWII Concentration Camps.
Neo liberals similarly misuse “work” in a way that obscures what is really going on in our society.
Maybe, the Covid unemployed newbies will react to the built in sadism of WINZ/MSD with calls for the obvious-increase benefit levels, individualise benefits, drop sanctions, abatement levels, and stand downs.
Really IRD should handle a streamlined income support including a Basic Income. Disband WINZ, and set up a new Social Security Agency for special needs groups-disabled, sick, ACC etc. Base it on no inquisitions, just pay and support citizens with what they reasonably need to have some sort of life.
Next Saturday would have been the election. I need to look at how all of the political parties are polling today. I would like to see a poll for next Saturday for the election which has been redated.
Possibly there are people out there who think there is an election next week. Those who have the election bottle of wine in the fridge will need to wait a bit longer. I reckon I will need a wine or two by election day.
This time 3 years ago I had my exit plan worked out in the event of a 4th-term National Government, as did others I knew, personally and anecdotally, things had become that unbearable. Annoying as NZF have been, it's safe to say Winston's decision literally saved a lot of lives. Citizens should not have to live in genuine fear of the outcome of General Elections.
Peters being in a coalition with Labour deserves praise and yes it was a lucky escape from a forth term National government.
I would like to see what a Labour Green coalition would be like.
Bernard Hickey reports history being made:
That means the funder of the govt gets to pay a transaction fee for the privilege of lending us their money. Rather nice of the capitalists, eh? "Guys, we got so much spare money we're dead keen to pay you to use it for a few years."
And just think of how effed they'd be if the government wasn't willing to do so because they simply don't need to do so. A government can create all the money that it needs.
The government can create all of its own money that it needs…and none of anyone elses.
How much wine and cheese do you need?
That fails to make any sense.
http://www.worldstopexports.com/new-zealands-top-10-exports/
http://www.worldstopexports.com/new-zealands-top-10-imports/
Still makes no sense.
The NZ government can create money and they can buy stuff with it. Yes, they can even buy stuff from offshore with it. They can do that because that money allows those people offshore to buy product from NZ.
That's basic market operation.
They could if
a) we had something they wanted
b)they were unable to get it somewhere else or make it themselves
c) the price was right
and then there is the ratio of available of NZD in relation to goods….you can make as many NZD as you like but you cannot create the unlimited goods you hope they represent nor the unlimited desire to hold them.
ALL of our major exports are freely available from a multitude of suppliers
Im sure Boeing and Airbus or Phizer will be falling over themselves to trade their products for NZD (or the wine and cheese they can buy with them)
Yes, that's how the market works.
But think about it in context of the rich person who has so much money and nowhere to spend it. They've got millions and millions of dollars, nowhere to spend it and if they put it in the bank the banks will charge fees on it because they don't have anywhere to put it either.
That's why they're so keen to buy NZ bonds with such a low negative interest rate – because it would cost them more to put it in the bank.
As I say, the government creating money can really fuckup the capitalists as they'd lose their bludging and they'd lose the ability to say, 'see, you need us', because we simply don't.
Im sure you recognise the irony of using a broken disconnected market to describe how 'markets work'
The bond purchases are no indication of offshore desire for NZD unless the purchasers are from offshore.
https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/statistics/e1
And the deflation the negative rate is indicating does not bode well for demand for trade in the real economy…indeed it indicates the lack of confidence in the real economy to maintain its functionality.
No, they're a sign the the wealthy are looking for anyway to protect their money from decreasing as it would upon the open market or even if they just kept it under the mattress.
I'm saying that the government shouldn't be giving them that security.
And it doesn't matter if there's any demand from offshore or not. Chances are that people offshore would still accept it as payment knowing that they could buy product from NZ at any time if the government used it to buy from offshore. The government can spend locally as well and that would, in many cases, be better for the economy and NZers.
And government spending can maintain and increase that functionality which, really, is my whole point and they don't need to sell bonds to rich people so as to protect those rich people's wealth to do it.
which takes us back to the beginning….the Gov can do as it wishes with the NZD but that is of little use when most of what we need to maintain our economy (and by extension society) is traded in currencies other than the NZD.
Advance Party anti-covid demo: Advance them into the clink and ban that Party as a terrorist organisation
Stuff reports a gathering of Jamie-Lee-Ross supporters in Auckland to march against the lockdown.
At least one busload of them went up from Bethlehem/Tauranga. I haven't noticed too many being restricted or disadvantaged in The Bay area at Level 2. What did Muldoon call them? Rent a crowd"?
Should at least end the misguided view among some (on here) that JLR is the good guy in Botany, simply by not being National. He's signed up to the Q-anon madness, and embraces the far right. Luxon is bad, but not worse.
Fortunately Ross only has another month in the job, and his nasty party will find out their true level of support. Good riddance.
Unfortunately there may have been carriers in today's march. And given that there was a scarcity of masks, we could see a "Melbourne" very easily.
Yes. Muldoon called them a Rent a Crowd but he was lying. They ranged from young students to the elderly and they were genuine. There were plenty of good reasons to protest during the Muldoon era and time proved the protesters were right.
Can't say the same about today's motley crowd in Queen St. If they have bused people to Auckland from other part of the North Island then they're suspect and could be described as a Rent a Crowd.
I'd love to know who's paying for it all, bussing people from all over the place wouldn't be cheap, and I can't see his fb followers doing it unless it's free
Wonder if the drivers got PPE.
Loved the bit about Billy The Kreep getting the quarantine breaker out of prison after seven days. Dumb shit is so thick he didn't know she was eligible for release after serving half of her sentence. Gives some indication of the intellect of his gang of 'protesters'.
Seems helping citizens with generous support payments to avoid prematurely opening up the economy is a winner.
TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada reported zero COVID-19 deaths in the past 24 hours for the first time since March 15, according to public health agency data released late on Friday.
With most provinces easing lockdown restrictions and as schools reopen for in-person classes, Canada’s infections have seen a mild pick-up in recent days. Authorities have been on high alert to avoid fresh outbreaks, and provinces including British Columbia have imposed new curbs to tackle the spread of the virus.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-canada/canada-reports-zero-covid-19-deaths-for-first-time-since-march-idUSKBN26301J
I feel that our international knowledge is low and shows a lack of understanding of the workings in politics elsewhere. The National Library has acted pragmatically and is making room for more NZ books by passing rarely used books to other libraries. That is an indication of a lack in us, and insularity.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/425885/national-library-in-middle-of-first-major-cull-of-international-books
Insular and unempathetic, materialistic, possessed by desire for consumerism, superior possessions and lifestyle, sentimentally moved by populist tragedies, valueless about others' plight? NZ'RUs? Brave New World?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/425647/prolonged-confinement-of-prisoners-could-prompt-legal-action-against-corrections
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/425401/punitive-culture-at-new-zealand-s-largest-women-s-prison-internal-corrections-review-says