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?
‘It has been said that figures rule the world. Maybe. I am quite sure that it is figures which show us whether it is being ruled well or badly.’ GoetheI was struck at a recent conference on equity for the elderly, how many presenters implicitly relied upon Statistics New Zealand. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveReporting on defence spending late last year, RNZ said the coalition government will have to make some tough calls this term to help the force address staff shortages and ageing infrastructure. “These are huge, huge amounts of government spending. It’s a significant proportion of the government’s ...
Peter Dunne writes – I am always wary when I hear that the Controller and Auditor-General has commented on or made recommendations to the government about an issue of public policy that does not relate strictly to public expenditure. According to the legislation, the role of the Controller ...
How Labour’s and National’s failure to move beyond neoliberalism has brought NZ to the brink of economic and cultural chaos Chris Trotter writes – TO START LOSING, so soon after you won, requires a special kind of political incompetence. At the heart of this Coalition ...
And why did the Crown not challenge the Tribunal’s jurisdiction? Gary Judd writes – Retired District Court Judge, David Harvey, has posted on his A Halflings View Substack an excellent summary of Justice Isacs’ judgment declining to uphold the witness summons issued by the Waitangi Tribunal ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Do you believe New Zealand runs its general elections fairly and competently? As a voter, can you be confident that the votes on your ballot will be counted towards the final result?As a political scientist, I’ve been asked these questions many times and ...
Macklemore isn’t someone I’d usually think about. Sure I liked his big hit from a few years back, everybody did it was catchy and cool with some memorable lines. But if I was going to think of artists who might speak out on political matters or world events, he wouldn’t ...
Another week goes by in the Luxon government’s efforts to roll back the past 70 years of social progress. The school lunches programme is to be downgraded by $107 million, and women need bother their heads no longer about pay equity, let alone expect ACC to provide adequate sexual violence ...
Brrr, the first cold snap of the year. Hope you’re rugged up nice and warm. Here are some stories that caught our eye this week… This Week on Greater Auckland On Monday, we had a post from a new contributor, Connor Sharp, who dug into the public feedback ...
Almost all of the Wellington City Council’s recommended zoning changes to allow many more apartments and townhouses in its inner-suburbs have been approved.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guest on geopolitics, ...
Open access notablesA Global Increase in Nearshore Tropical Cyclone Intensification, Balaguru et al., Earth's Future:Tropical Cyclones (TCs) inflict substantial coastal damages, making it pertinent to understand changing storm characteristics in the important nearshore region. Past work examined several aspects of TCs relevant for impacts in coastal regions. However, ...
Do you believe New Zealand runs its general elections fairly and competently? As a voter, can you be confident that the votes on your ballot will be counted towards the final result? As a political scientist, I’ve been asked these questions many times and always answered “yes”, with very few ...
Thus far May has followed on from a quiet April in the blogging department, but in fairness, it has been another case of doing what I am supposed to be doing, namely writing original fiction. Plus reading. So don’t worry – I have been productive. But in order to reassure ...
Buzz from the Beehive A new government agency will open for business on July 1 – the Social Investment Agency. As a new standalone central agency effective from 1 July, it will lead the development of social investment across Government, helping ministers understand who they need to invest in, what ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “Follow the money” is the classic directive to journalists trying to understand where power and influence lie in society. In terms of uncovering who influences various New Zealand political parties and governments, it therefore pays to look at who is funding them. The ...
Alwyn Poole writes – After being elected to Parliament in 2008 the maiden speech of Hipkins was substantially around education policy. He was Labour’s spokesperson for education 2011 – 2017. He was Minister for Education from 2017 until February 2023. This is approximately 88% of the time Labour ...
Eric Crampton writes – A fashion industry group is lobbying for protections. They make the usual arguments and a newer one. None of it makes sense. An industry group says it pumped $7.8 billion into the economy last year – that’s 1.9 percent of New Zealand’s GDP. ...
In December 2006, Fiji's military leader Voreqe Bainimarama overthrew the elected government in a coup. He ruled Fiji for the next 16 years, first as dictator, then as "elected" Prime Minister. But now, he's finally been sent to jail where he belongs. Sadly, this isn't for his real crime of ...
Don't like National's corrupt Muldoonist "fast-track" law? Aotearoa's environmental NGO's - Greenpeace, Forest & Bird, WWF, Coromandel Watchdog, Coal Action Network Aotearoa, Kiwis Against Seabed Mining, and others - have announced a joint march against it in Auckland in June: When: 13:00, 8 June, 2024 Where: Aotea Square, Auckland You ...
Seymour describes sushi as too woke for school meals. There are no fish sushi meals recommended by the School Lunches programme. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: The Government will swap out hot meals for packaged sandwiches to save $107 million on school lunches for poor kids. MSD has pulled ...
I don't mind stealin' bread from the mouths of decadenceBut I can't feed on the powerless when my cup's already overfilled, yeahBut it's on the table, the fire's cookin'And they're farmin' babies, while slaves are workin'The blood is on the table and the mouths are chokin'But I'm goin' hungry, yeahSome ...
The Ardern Government’s chickens came home to roost yesterday with the news that the country is short of natural gas. In 2018, Labour banned offshore petroleum exploration, and industry executives say that the attendant loss of confidence by the industry impacted overall investment in onshore gas fields. Energy Resources Minister ...
Hi,If you’ve been digging through the newly launched Webworm store (orders are being dispatched worldwide as I type!) you’ll have noticed the best model we had was Calvin.This is Calvin.Calvin.Calvin is 7, and is the son of my producer over on Flightless Bird, Rob — aka “Wobby Wob”. Rob also ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Climate change is everywhere. And when something's everywhere it can feel like it's nowhere. So how do we get our heads ...
Its a law like gravity: whenever a right-wing government is elected, they start attacking democracy. And now, after talking to their Republican and Tory and Fidesz chums at the International Democracy Union forum in Wellington, National is doing it here, announcing plans to remove election-day enrolment. Or, to put it ...
Yesterday Winston Peters focussed his attention on the important matter at hand. Tweeting. Like the former, and quite possibly next, orange POTUS, from whom he takes much of his political strategy, Winston is an avid X’er.His message didn’t resemble an historic address this time. In fact it was more reminiscent ...
Buzz from the Beehive A significant decline in natural gas production has given Resources Minister Shane Jones an opportunity to reiterate his enthusiasm for the mining and burning of coal. For good measure, he has praised an announcement from Genesis Energy that it will resume importing coal. He and Energy ...
“Follow the money” is the classic directive to journalists trying to understand where power and influence lie in society. In terms of uncovering who influences various New Zealand political parties and governments, it therefore pays to look at who is funding them. The political parties are legally obliged to make ...
Rob MacCullough writes – Here is my subjective ranking on a “most-left” to “most-right” scale of most of our major NZ Universities, with some anecdotal (and at times amusing) evidence to back up the claim.Extreme Left Auckland University of TechnologyEvidenceThe ...
Eric Crampton writes – I hadn’t thought about this one until a helpful email showed up in my inbox.It’s pretty obvious that income tax thresholds should automatically index with inflation – whether to anchor the thresholds in percentiles of the income distribution, or to anchor against a real ...
Jacqui Van Der Kaay writes – Parliament’s speaker had no option but to refer Green MP Julie Anne Genter to the Privileges Committee for her behaviour in the House last Wednesday evening. The incident, in which she crossed the floor to wave a book and yell at National ...
Gary Judd writes – The Dean of the law school at the Auckland University of Technology is someone called Khylee Quince. I have been sent her social media posting in which she has, over the LawNews headline “Senior King’s Counsel files complaint about compulsory tikanga Maori studies for ...
Cleo Paskal writes – WASHINGTON, D.C.: ‘Many of us have received phone calls from [the opposing camp] telling them if they join the camp they will be given projects for their wards and $300,000 [around US$35,000] each’, says former Malaita Premier Daniel Suidani. The elections in Solomon Islands aren’t ...
With hindsight, it was inevitable that (a) Hamas would agree to the ceasefire deal brokered by Egypt and Qatar and that ( b) Israel would then immediately launch attacks on Rafah, regardless. We might have hoped the concessions made by Hamas would cause Israel to desist from slaughtering thousands more ...
Placards and mourners outside the Kilbirnie Mosque following the Christchurch terror attack: MSD has terminated the Kaiwhakaoranga service, which has been used by 415 families since the attacks. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The Government’s pledge to only cut ‘back office’ staff rather than ‘frontline’ services is on increasingly shaky ground, with ...
There’s been a few smaller public transport announcements over the last week or so that I thought I’d cover in a single post. Fareshare I’ve long called for Auckland Transport to offer a way to enable employer-subsidised public transport options. The need for this took on even more importance ...
Parliament’s speaker had no option but to refer Green MP Julie Anne Genter to the Privileges Committee for her behaviour in the House last Wednesday evening. The incident, in which she crossed the floor to wave a book and yell at National Minister Matt Doocey, reflects poorly on Genter and ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Who likes being sneered at? Nobody. Worse yet, when the sneerer has their facts all wrong, and might well be an idiot.The sneer in question is The adults are in charge now, and it is a sneer offered in retort to criticism of this new Government, no matter how well ...
When in government, Labour pushed to extend the Parliamentary term to four years, to reduce accountability and our ability to vote out a bad government. And now, they're trying to do it through the member's ballot, with a Four-Year Parliamentary Term Legislation Bill. The bill at least requires a referendum ...
A ballot for a single Member's Bill was held today, and the following bill was drawn: Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill (Hūhana Lyndon) The bill would prevent the government from stealing Māori land in breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It ...
Simeon Brown, alongside Wayne Brown, is favouring a political figleaf now in exchange for loading up tens of millions in extra interest costs on Auckland ratepayers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s is pushing back hard at suggestions from Local Government Minister Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown ...
Buzz from the Beehive One headline-grabber from the Beehive yesterday was the OECD’s advice that the government must bring the Budget deficit under control or face higher interest rates. Another was the announcement of a $1.9 billion “investment” in Corrections over the next four years. In the best interests of ...
Chris Trotter writes – Had Zheng He’s fleet sailed east, not west, in the early Fifteenth Century, how different our world would be. There is little reason to suppose that the sea-going junks of the Ming Dynasty, among the largest and most sophisticated sailing vessels ever constructed, would have failed ...
David Farrar writes – Two articles give a useful contrast in balance. Both seek to be neutral explainer articles. This one in the Herald on Social Investment covers the pros and cons nicely. It links to critical pieces and talks about aspects that failed and aspects that are more ...
The tikanga regulations will compel law students to be taught that a system which does not conform with the rule of law is nevertheless law which should be observed and applied…Gary Judd KC writes – I have made a complaint to Parliament’s Regulation ...
The future of Te Huia, the train between Hamilton and Auckland, has been getting a lot of attention recently as current funding for it is only in place till the end of June. The government initially agreed to a five year trial, through to April 2026, but that was subject ...
TL;DR: Hamas has just agreed to Israel’s ceasefire plan. Nelson hospital’s rebuild has been cut back to save money. The OECD suggests New Zealand break up network monopolies, including in electricity. PM Christopher Luxon’s news conference on a prison expansion announcement last night was his messiest yet.Here’s my top six ...
A homicide in Ponsonby, a manhunt with a killer on the run. The nation’s leader stands before a press conference reassuring a frightened nation that he’ll sort it out, he’ll keep them safe, he’ll build some new prison spaces.Sorry what? There’s a scary dude on the run with a gun ...
Hi,I know it’s been awhile since there’s been any Webworm merch — and today that all changes!Over the last four months, I’ve been working with New Zealand artist Jess Johnson to create a series of t-shirts, caps and stickers that are infused with Webworm DNA — and as of right ...
The OECD’s chief economist yesterday laid it on the line for the new Government: bring the deficit under control or face higher Reserve Bank interest rates for longer. And to bring the deficit under control, she meant not borrowing for tax cuts. But there was more. Without policy changes—introducing a ...
After a hiatus of over four months Selwyn Manning and I finally got it together to re-start the “A View from Afar” podcast series. We shall see how we go but aim to do 2 episodes per month if possible. … Continue reading → ...
In 2008, the UK Parliament passed the Climate Change Act 2008. The law established a system of targets, budgets, and plans, with inbuilt accountability mechanisms; the aim was to break the cycle of empty promises and replace it with actual progress towards emissions reduction. The law was passed with near-universal ...
Buzz from the Beehive Local Water Done Well – let’s be blunt – is a silly name, but the first big initiative to put it into practice has gone done well. This success is reflected in the headline on an RNZ report:District mayors welcome Auckland’s new water deal with ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate ConnectionsA farmworker cleans the solar panels of a solar water pump in the village of Jagadhri, Haryana Country, India. (Photo credit: Prashanth Vishwanathan/ IWMI) Decisions made in India over the next few years will play a key role in global ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – The Children’s Minister, Karen Chhour, intends to repeal Section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 because it creates conflict between claimed Crown Treaty obligations and the child’s best interests. In her words, “Oranga Tamariki’s governing principles and its act should be colour ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. ...
Brian Easton writes – This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be (I will report on them ...
TL;DR:Winston Peters is reported to have won a budget increase for MFAT. David Seymour wanted his Ministry of Regulation to be three times bigger than the Productivity Commission. Simeon Brown is appointing a Crown Monitor to Watercare to protect the Claytons Crown Guarantee he had to give ratings agencies ...
The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. Carr had made highly ...
I could be a florist'Round the corner from Rye LaneI'll be giving daisies to craziesBut, baby, I'll wrap you up real safe Oh, I can give you flowers At the end of every dayFor the center of your table, a rainbowIn case you have people 'round to stay Depending on ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to May 12 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Finance Minister Nicola Willis will give a pre-budget speech on Thursday.Parliament sits from Question Time at 2pm on ...
The price of the foreign affairs “reset” is now becoming apparent, with Defence set to get a funding boost in the Budget. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed that it will be one of the few votes, apart from Health and Education and possibly Police, which will get an increase ...
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 28, 2024 thru Sat, May 4, 2024. Story of the week "It’s straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. In fact, research by John Cook and his colleagues ...
Yesterday I received come lovely feedback following my Star Wars themed newsletter. A few people mentioned they’d enjoyed reading the personal part at the beginning.I often begin newsletters with some memories, or general thoughts, before commencing the main topic. This hopefully sets the mood and provides some context in which ...
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Today New Zealand First will introduce a Member’s Bill that will protect women’s spaces. The ‘Fair Access to Bathrooms Bill’ will require, primarily in the interest and safety of women and girls, that all new non-domestic publicly accessible buildings provide separate, clearly demarcated, unisex and single sex bathrooms. This Bill ...
The Green Party is welcoming Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ continuation of Hon. James Shaw’s cross-party work on climate adaptation, now in the form of a Finance and Expenditure Committee Inquiry. ...
The National Government plans to cut 390 jobs at ACC, including roles in the areas of prevention of sexual violence, road safety and workplace safety. ...
The Government has been caught in opposition to evidence once again as it looks to usher in tried, tested and failed work seminar obligations for job-seeking beneficiaries. ...
The Green Party is welcoming the announcement by the Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop to approve most of the Wellington City Council’s District Plan recommendations. ...
David Seymour has failed to get the sweeping cuts he wanted to the free and healthy school lunch programme, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon says her Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill is an opportunity to right some past wrongs around the alienation of Māori land. ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
Introduction Good morning. It’s a great privilege to be here at the 2024 Infrastructure Symposium. I was extremely happy when the Prime Minister asked me to be his Minister for Infrastructure. It is one of the great barriers holding the New Zealand economy back from achieving its potential. Building high ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced the upcoming Budget will include new funding of $571 million for Defence Force pay and projects. “Our servicemen and women do New Zealand proud throughout the world and this funding will help ensure we retain their services and expertise as we navigate an increasingly ...
New Zealand’s ability to cope with climate change will be strengthened as part of the Government’s focus to build resilience as we rebuild the economy, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “An enduring and long-term approach is needed to provide New Zealanders and the economy with certainty as the climate ...
Jobseeker beneficiaries who have work obligations must now meet with MSD within two weeks of their benefit starting to determine their next step towards finding a job, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “A key part of the coalition Government’s plan to have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker ...
A new standalone Social Investment Agency will power-up the social investment approach, driving positive change for our most vulnerable New Zealanders, Social Investment Minister Nicola Willis says. “Despite the Government currently investing more than $70 billion every year into social services, we are not seeing the outcomes we want for ...
Check against delivery Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you to outline the Coalition Government’s approach to our first Budget. Thank you Mark Skelly, President of the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce, together with your Board and team, for hosting me. I’d like to acknowledge His Worship ...
Your Excellency Ambassador Meredith, Members of the Diplomatic Corps and Ambassadors from European Union Member States, Ministerial colleagues, Members of Parliament, and other distinguished guests, Thank you everyone for joining us. Ladies and gentlemen - In diplomacy, we often speak of ‘close’ and ‘long-standing’ relations. ...
The Therapeutic Products Act (TPA) will be repealed this year so that a better regime can be put in place to provide New Zealanders safe and timely access to medicines, medical devices and health products, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello announced today. “The medicines and products we are talking about ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop, today released his decision on twenty recommendations referred to him by the Wellington City Council relating to its Intensification Planning Instrument, after the Council rejected those recommendations of the Independent Hearings Panel and made alternative recommendations. “Wellington notified its District Plan on ...
Rape Awareness Week (6-10 May) is an important opportunity to acknowledge the continued effort required by government and communities to ensure that all New Zealanders can live free from violence, say Ministers Karen Chhour and Louise Upston. “With 1 in 3 women and 1 in 8 men experiencing sexual violence ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government will be delivering a more efficient Healthy School Lunches Programme, saving taxpayers approximately $107 million a year compared to how Labour funded it, by embracing innovation and commercial expertise. “We are delivering on our commitment to treat taxpayers’ money ...
New research on the impacts of extreme weather on coastal marine habitats in Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay will help fishery managers plan for and respond to any future events, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. A report released today on research by Niwa on behalf of Fisheries New Zealand ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters will lead a broad political delegation on a five-stop Pacific tour next week to strengthen New Zealand’s engagement with the region. The delegation will visit Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Tuvalu. “New Zealand has deep and ...
There has been a material decline in gas production according to figures released today by the Gas Industry Co. Figures released by the Gas Industry Company show that there was a 12.5 per cent reduction in gas production during 2023, and a 27.8 per cent reduction in gas production in the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins tonight announced the recipients of the Minister of Defence Awards of Excellence for Industry, saying they all contribute to New Zealanders’ security and wellbeing. “Congratulations to this year’s recipients, whose innovative products and services play a critical role in the delivery of New Zealand’s defence capabilities, ...
Welcome to you all - it is a pleasure to be here this evening.I would like to start by thanking Greg Lowe, Chair of the New Zealand Defence Industry Advisory Council, for co-hosting this reception with me. This evening is about recognising businesses from across New Zealand and overseas who in ...
It is a pleasure to be speaking to you as the Minister for Digitising Government. I would like to thank Akolade for the invitation to address this Summit, and to acknowledge the great effort you are making to grow New Zealand’s digital future. Today, we stand at the cusp of ...
New Zealand is urging both Israel and Hamas to agree to an immediate ceasefire to avoid the further humanitarian catastrophe that military action in Rafah would unleash, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The immense suffering in Gaza cannot be allowed to worsen further. Both sides have a responsibility to ...
A new online data dashboard released today as part of the Government’s school attendance action plan makes more timely daily attendance data available to the public and parents, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. The interactive dashboard will be updated once a week to show a national average of how ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced Rosemary Banks will be New Zealand’s next Ambassador to the United States of America. “Our relationship with the United States is crucial for New Zealand in strategic, security and economic terms,” Mr Peters says. “New Zealand and the United States have a ...
The Government is considering creating a new tier of minerals permitting that will make it easier for hobby miners to prospect for gold. “New Zealand was built on gold, it’s in our DNA. Our gold deposits, particularly in regions such as Otago and the West Coast have always attracted fortune-hunters. ...
Minister for Trade Todd McClay today announced that New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will commence negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA). Minister McClay met with his counterpart UAE Trade Minister Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi in Dubai, where they announced the launch of negotiations on a ...
New Zealand Sign Language Week is an excellent opportunity for all Kiwis to give the language a go, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. This week (May 6 to 12) is New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Week. The theme is “an Aotearoa where anyone can sign anywhere” and aims to ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
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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
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