Open mike 12/11/2024

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, November 12th, 2024 - 55 comments
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Open mike is your post.

For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

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

Step up to the mike …

55 comments on “Open mike 12/11/2024 ”

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  1. Ad 1
    12 November 2024 at 7:08 am

    Not hard to imagine Ardern doing a solid empathic job apologising for abuse of over 100,000 New Zealanders in state care.

    Today we find out what Luxon has as a real leader.

    • Sanctuary 1.1
      12 November 2024 at 7:20 am

      Prepare to be dissappointed. Natrional has been busy trying to ban reality from this occassion – getting the speaker to deal with bothersome journalists, letting it be known the gallary gossip columnists they are "worried" about the proximity of the God-King to survivors with criminal records (expect Luxon to be whisked away by a security detail the monet he finishes stumbling through a corporate apaology) and they are clearly squirining their way to not giving these poor people a brass razoo in decent compo.

    • Kay 1.2
      12 November 2024 at 8:03 am

      Her mentor, Helen Clark had no problems at all refusing to even acknowledge state care abuse that happened to adults, yet alone apologise. I'm sure Jancinda would make a fantastic job of an apology, but it would be with very false sincerity, and only because she was forced to, in the same way Luxon has backed into it. Notice how Labour hasn't exactly been screaming from the rooftops about this?

      Some politicians might individually genuinely care about this, but governments don't want to know.

      • Ad 1.2.1
        12 November 2024 at 8:14 am

        Well, sorry you're so bitter. If you are state-damaged you are entitled of course to your rage.

        Each crisis Ardern faced always came with volumes of cash and corrective legislation.

        Like Treaty deals, the $$ is never going to be an equitable redress for the damage. The most any state can offer is sustained care and attention and avoid doing it again.

        The government have already signalled the legislation to come.

        This is one of those moments where the leader, the role and its execution are far more important than the party.

        • Kay 1.2.1.1
          12 November 2024 at 9:13 am

          "This is one of those moments where the leader, the role and its execution are far more important than the party."

          I couldn't agree more. And I sincerely hope that happens for those survivors.

          Yes I'm bitter, many people are and for good reason. Labour lost my vote forever over their behaviour at the time. They could cure cancer, poverty and bring about world peace and I still wouldn't vote for them. It's impossible to believe that as a government anything would happen beyond some sort of token gesture.

          As has come out in the Royal Commission, the blame is ultimately on successive governments. I really believe that it's only got to the apology stage because it's children involved, and the revelations have embarrassed the current government to the point where the have to be seen to be sorry.

          I have total sympathy with the survivors, and I wish them well today, and in the future. And I hope that this has opened the eyes of the general public who have historically never given a damn, and/or choose to blame the victims.

      • tWig 1.2.2
        12 November 2024 at 8:47 am

        But wasn't it Ardern's government that made it a priority to set up and fund the extensive Commission, shortly after coming into power?

        • SPC 1.2.2.1
          12 November 2024 at 11:16 am

          Yes.

          • alwyn 1.2.2.1.1
            12 November 2024 at 12:22 pm

            Did you notice how the Commission was limited to looking at things that happened before 1999, which was 19 years earlier?

            Perhaps that was just a coincidence in that they couldn't look at anything that occurred during the time of the Clark Government.

            They also set the starting date to 1950 which excluded anything that occurred during the time on the 1935 – 1949 Labour Government.

            • SPC 1.2.2.1.1.1
              12 November 2024 at 12:32 pm

              Did you notice, no criticism from National over the determination of time period? Then, or now.

              But sure, go ahead contact the PM and call on him to investigate cases of abuse between 1935-1949 and 1999-2008.

            • adam 1.2.2.1.1.2
              12 November 2024 at 2:21 pm

              FFS alwyn you get their was a major depression and a major war in that 1935-1949 time period?

              This type of politics from you is a cheap shot

      • Incognito 1.2.3
        12 November 2024 at 11:54 am

        Notice how Labour hasn't exactly been screaming from the rooftops about this?

        Not sure what you’re implying here.

        Whatever Labour did and for whatever reasons, it hasn’t abused [bad pun] this for cynical political point scoring & gain – it’s a non-partisan issue for, by, and with the Crown.

      • observer 1.2.4
        12 November 2024 at 3:32 pm

        Jacinda's response to the mosque massacre shows how wrong your take is. It was spontaneous, sincere, not scripted by lawyers and consultants.

        We can imagine hypotheticals forever, but in the end we can only make judgements based on real events. That was very real.

    • observer 1.3
      12 November 2024 at 3:28 pm

      I wouldn't criticise Luxon's speech today, or Hipkins. (And in general I regard them as 1/10 and 5/10 leaders, respectively).

      The PM said what needed to be said, didn't use weasel words or shoehorn in some political point. It was a proper apology, so credit for that.

      Of course the real tests are yet to come, going beyond words to actions, but let's hope the early steps (announced yesterday) are followed up. I think Erica Stanford is genuine and wants her boss to back her, but I'm much less confident in Luxon's bosses, Seymour and Peters.

      • Incognito 1.3.1
        12 November 2024 at 3:49 pm

        Luxon and Willis are in a fiscally tight spot of their own making with so many roads & tunnels to build, so many pot holes to fill, and so many compounding tax cuts. Seymour and Peters will extract their pound of flesh behind the scenes putting up a united front with Luxon (while holding the knives behind his back). I expect that to right a major wrong, more wrongs will be committed by this CoC.

  2. Sanctuary 2
    12 November 2024 at 7:14 am

    Some reading…

    Adam Tooze weighs in on the Trump victory:

    https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-332-the-radicalization?publication_id=192845&post_id=151464403&isFreemail=true&r=1mieg1&triedRedirect=true

    And I can't reccommend this piece in Dissent by Gabe Winant highly enough:

    https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/exit-right/

    An example –

    "…American politics has been blown open by the reverberating crises of neoliberalism and capitalist globalization… …At each juncture, the Democrats have attempted restoration: to manage the crisis, carry out the bailout, stitch things back together, and try to get back to normal. It is the form of this orientation, as much as substantive questions of culture, race, and gender, that seems to me the fundamental reason the Democrats are often experienced as a force of inhibition rather than empowerment by so many voters. And it is against this politics of containment that Trump’s obscenity comes to feel like a liberation for so many…"

    The collapse of the centrist politics of containment is a concept I'll remember everytime Rory Stewart gets another prediction massively wrong, or when a vacuous Hipkins prevaricates on what should be red meat policy or issue to any left populist party of the working class.

    • Ad 2.1
      12 November 2024 at 8:38 am

      Both Social Democrats and Fabians would largely agree with the task as described, and they've been at it for over 150 years. Probably the Fabians would expect actual redistributive seats as workers at the Board table, and to operate industrial towns as integrated villages.

      And yes we are better at meeting national crises, because we generally understand state instrumentality better.

  3. gsays 3
    12 November 2024 at 7:28 am

    Woke up early so decided to look up Aaron Smale in the search here on TS.

    I wanted to read more about the cover up by public servants and MPs that the Abuse in State Care refers to.

    Interesting to see Rosemary McDonald was over this 6 years ago in the context of the state spying on citizens using Thompson and Clark.

    Does anyone have any articles bookmarked they can share delving into the activities of the Public Service in regards the cover up?

    Cheers in advance.

  4. Bearded Git 4
    12 November 2024 at 7:37 am

    Latest vote count:

    Trump 74.7m (50%)

    Harris 71.2m (48%)

    Despite all the talk in the MSM about an overwhelming victory for Trump, the USA is split down the middle.

    https://edition.cnn.com/election/2024/results/president?election-data-id=2024-PG&election-painting-mode=projection-with-lead&filter-key-races=false&filter-flipped=false&filter-remaining=false

    • gsays 4.1
      12 November 2024 at 8:33 am

      I forgot where I read it but… There were more than a few that voted Biden that didn't vote Harris and that Trump picked up a lot of previously non voters.

      More importantly, as Obtrectator says below, Trump is the distraction. A very, very good one.

    • SPC 4.2
      12 November 2024 at 12:46 pm

      Trump 2020 – 74,223,975

      Biden 2020 – 81,283,501

  5. Tony Veitch 5
    12 November 2024 at 7:41 am

    It's not going to be easy for Trump to deliver all his promises, as this short clip (7mins) explains.

    Hopefully, all his pigeons come home to roost, or whatever the expression is for him making a mighty cock-up, even more so than our ACT-led CoC!

    • Bearded Git 5.1
      12 November 2024 at 10:26 am

      It's weird that the whole House is elected every two years. Effectively there is a 2-year election cycle in the USA.

  6. Obtrectator 6
    12 November 2024 at 8:13 am

    OMG, how many more times?

    Trump himself doesn't matter!

    It's the people in the shadows using him as a distraction while they get on with the real biz.

  7. joe90 7
    12 November 2024 at 8:32 am

    Why the right wants MSM to die.

    .

    Latinos, young men, non-college-educated white people, suburban women. The exit polls and political analysis invariably focuses on the changing behavior of demographic groups.

    That ignores a big determinant of political behavior: where people get their news and information. It’s odd how little attention has been given to this, given that in the past decade we’ve had a revolution in how information flows.

    The exit polls did not ask about media consumption, so we need to look for indirect clues. NBC asked the question in April when President Joe Biden was still in the race, and the results were dramatic. Among people who got their news from “newspapers,” Biden was winning 70-21. Among people who got their news from “YouTube/Google,” Trump led 55-39.

    […]

    One meta-cause of the change is obvious: the rise of social media. The other is more indirect but still significant: the collapse of local news. We’ve lost one-third of our local newspapers; the number of reporters has dropped 60 percent in two decades. Studies have shown that the contraction of local news has created a vacuum — which has been filled by partisan news sources and social media (both polarizing and more likely to spread misinformation)

    https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/11/09/social-media-traditional-news-elections-00188548

    Between Aug. 30 and Oct. 8, a team of researchers at four universities surveyed thousands of American adults and asked the following question: When making a decision about voting, including candidates for office and ballot initiatives, what is your most important source of information?

    […]

    Among the key findings of the latest CHIP50 survey, which comprised a nationwide sample of 25,518 responses:

    • Across the entire sample, discussions with friends/family and news stories were the top two primary sources of election information in 2024, at 29% and 26%, respectively. Recommendations from clergy (2%) and social media (9%) were among the other primary sources.
    • Democrats and Independents were more likely to rely on news stories as their primary source of election information than Republicans. A larger percentage of Republicans listed friends and family as their primary source of election information than did Democrats or Independents.
    • Americans who had not attended college were more likely to rely on friends and family for election information than Americans with more formal education, who were more likely to rely on the news media.
    • Asked specifically which news media sources were most important to them when making a voting decision, 41% of respondents selected national TV news as the top news media source.

    https://journalistsresource.org/home/information-sources-voting-decisions-2024-election/

    • Belladonna 7.1
      12 November 2024 at 9:13 am

      It seems to be largely a class thing. Wealthy, white, educated, liberal people are both more likely to vote Democrat, and more likely to consume traditional news media.

      • Koina 7.1.1
        12 November 2024 at 9:30 am

        Very astute observation as Elon Musk is a staunch Democrat and has told everyone the only information source he uses is the local mid week give away paper which he scours for bargains as he is living hand to mouth.

        • Belladonna 7.1.1.1
          12 November 2024 at 9:37 am

          You seem to be struggling with the concept of 'groups'.

          Because you can find one example of someone who does not fit the group behaviour, doesn't invalidate the general observational pattern.

          Or, are you somehow claiming that white, wealthy, liberals are more likely to vote for Trump – because Elon Musk (presumably) did?

  8. Jimmy 8
    12 November 2024 at 9:13 am

    Mike Hosking will be miffed today as Luxon cancelled coming on his show to take a call from Trump.

  10. Adrian 10
    12 November 2024 at 9:57 am

    My son has just returned from a short trip to the States. In a couple of different Ubers he asked a Porto Rican and a Guatemalan driver who and why they voted for, Trump both times, I suggested it was the Pulla Benefit charade, pulling the ladder up but he said the answer was crime committed by recent Latino immigration, which is as we know a lie promulgated by Trump et al, That’s the answer, the Luxon/ Key Gambit , lie and lie often. It is what the left is incapable of, we don’t have a sympathetic media that will go along with the our bullshit and our reps are wary of being caught out. BTW, the Guatemalan was coy on whether he was a legal immigrant even tho he had been there 40 years, his reply was” I pay my taxes”.

    • mpledger 10.1
      12 November 2024 at 12:16 pm

      Illegal immigrants have often been there a very long time. They fit in and don't look illegal.

      The Pew Research analysis finds that 35% of unauthorized adult immigrants have resided in the U.S. for 15 years or more. (https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2011/12/01/unauthorized-immigrants-length-of-residency-patterns-of-parenthood/)

      That's why this guy's words:

      The US president-elect's new hire Tom Homan says as 'border tsar', he will deliver the "largest deportation operation in history". (https://www.bbc.com/)

      are not going to end well.

      You're taking away people's neighbours who look, speak and act American.

      And once you have an industrial scale operation to make that happen, what do you do with it once the illegal immigrants are gone?

      Who will they come for next?

    • Macro 10.2
      12 November 2024 at 1:23 pm

      Meanwhile..

      Trump named Stephen Miller his White House deputy chief of staff for policy. Miller was the architect of some of Trump’s first-term immigration policies, including family separation and an order to ban travel into the U.S. from several majority-Muslim countries. Miller previously said a second Trump term would prioritize limiting asylum grants and work visas, punishing “sanctuary cities,” expanding the travel ban, and forcing the mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. NBC News

      I just wonder what those who voted Trump really understand about where their country is now headed – and what they are going to do when the supply of chickens for KFC dries up* and their McDonald burgers escalate in costs because the cost of bull beef goes through the roof?

      *Immigrants are the folk who process the chickens for KFC – Americans do not want to do this rather nasty job at the pay rates being offered.

      • bwaghorn 10.2.1
        12 November 2024 at 2:33 pm

        bull beef goes through the roof?

        I ll be interested to see if he really does put large tarrifs on beef , I'd imagine taking people burgers away is close to as bad as taking there guns😉

  11. Dennis Frank 11
    12 November 2024 at 10:21 am

    There's populism & there's leaderism:

    Within your analysis of populist movements across Europe, you outline how populist platforms were based on a rejection of representative democracy in favour of a more direct – unmediated – relationship between citizens and the state. Despite this appeal to become more democratic, you argue that political leaders become even more important than within traditional party structures.Can you elaborate on some of the examples and weaknesses of the “leaderistic” platforms that emerged across Europe since 2008?

    It’s what we could call a version of the ‘iron law of oligarchy’, first proposed by the sociologist Robert Michels. Basically, it suggests that institutions typically operate within a chain of command – sorted into the leaders and the led – and where there is a lack of institutional structure, it’s almost inevitable that leaders will step in… What is this shift to a dependence on a leader, not as someone who is able to carry out a programme, but a substitute for a programme? It’s very striking that before political leaders played immensely important roles in political parties, they were mainly seen as leaders who could be trusted in carrying out a certain political programme that pre-existed that leader. What you now have is a very interesting dynamic whereby the leaders themselves sell themselves thus: ‘I am electable, and therefore I will be able to give you a programme that can win’.

    That completely shifts the priority between programme and leader, where the leader comes before the programme… you need certain kinds of recognisable personalities to compete in the current attention economy. It’s essential to have a recognisable brand in order for these extremely capricious customers or consumers to be able to keep their eyes fixed on you. I think it’s a testament to the marketisation of politics that leaders now don’t simply get a base together, or tell you that they can execute a programme. It’s all brand loyalty… In spite of the horizontal promises of the internet – the idea that the platform economy is open, democratic, and flat – once you institutionalise, you just have to have some kind of counterpart at the top. And because the ties are so weak between the base and the leadership, a “hyper leader” is basically the only figure that can do this task for you.

    https://www.resilience.org/stories/2024-08-28/interview-the-populist-moment/?mc_cid=23b53b38e6

    I think this captures the essence of the leader/brand/party triad that online politics seems to use – where party is more simulated than real, ideology has evaporated into the ether and grass-roots organising often seems too hard. Folks increasingly lack time & propensity for deep thought so the trend to shallow continues…

  12. joe90 12
    12 November 2024 at 11:04 am

    The war on the woke mind virus was the warm-up for the most recent front in the war on women.

    .

    As if women everywhere weren’t already aware of how little respect men have for them and their basic human rights, Donald Trump’s white supremacist pal Nick Fuentes boldly took to X on election night to declare: “Your body, my choice. Forever.”

    Chilling enough in isolation (though it’s not the first time he’s uttered this harmful phrase), these words took on a whole new level of threat as young men and boys – in the US and beyond – started echoing this misogynistic messaging online. And why wouldn’t they?

    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/trump-women-abortion-your-body-my-choice-b2644855.html

    ISD researchers tracked narratives targeting women and the discussion of those narratives between November 4 and 6, 2024 across X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Facebook and Reddit. The use of derogatory and misogynistic language was already rife among well-noted manosphere and extremist communities on these platforms, and this activity has only gained steam in the past three days since the election. ISD also observed reports of these narratives being used to harass women offline, particularly on high school and college campuses.

    • In the past 24 hours, there has been a 4,600% increase in mentions of the terms “your body, my choice” and “get back in the kitchen” on X. Similarly misogynist language, such as the use of “dumb cunt” to target Harris, television personalities such as Rachel Maddow and others, received more than 64,000 mentions on X from more than 42,000 accounts on November 5.

    https://www.isdglobal.org/digital_dispatches/your-body-my-choice-hate-and-harassment-towards-women-spreads-online/

  13. tWig 13
    12 November 2024 at 11:54 am

    Malik in the Guardian does a piece on 'cosplaying' social justice. His ideas are relevant to the discussion at TS around loss of working-class focus in the Labour Party.

    ‘ “symbolic capitalists” – “professionals who traffic in symbols and rhetoric, images and narratives, data and analysis, ideas and abstraction”… using the language of social justice to gain status and accrue “cultural capital”. Theirs is a struggle within the elite presented as a struggle against the elite on behalf of the poor and the dispossessed.” ‘, he quotes Al-Gharbi on ‘wokeness’.

    Always been a source of tension within the vanguard of the people. Judge by deeds and not words.

  14. tWig 14
    12 November 2024 at 12:10 pm

    Spiderhoof calls out Luxon's version of trade talks on the Gulf States free trade agreement, claiming negotiations apparently 'languished' for 18 years, and were only valiantly resurrected by Todd MacLay recently.

  15. SPC 15
    12 November 2024 at 1:07 pm

    The Australians had there own royal commission – limited to those with disability in care.

    The initial outcome and the response earlier this year.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-31/government-responds-to-disability-royal-commission/104141938

    https://thestandard.org.nz/alp-knows-how-to-redress-wrongs-nz-dithers/

  16. Ad 16
    12 November 2024 at 1:35 pm

    Very surprised the Abuse in State Care bill doesn't address compensation for victims.

    Clearly had several years to draft its inclusion no matter the complexity.

    There's plenty of frameworks the state already has from MoJ.

    They can Pony up for leaky homes, Treaty, and MoJ miscarriages of justice.

    Don't just be sorry and legislate.

    Compensate.

  17. SPC 17
    12 November 2024 at 1:47 pm

    History.

    The Nationwide Health and Disability Advocacy Service

    In 1987, Judge Silvia Cartwright identified the need for an advocacy service during a major independent inquiry into the treatment of patients at an Auckland hospital. The Cartwright Report, released on 5 August 1988, outlined the findings of the inquiry, and made key recommendations. These included how to address the need for a focus on consumer rights and the quality of services provided to consumers.

    The inquiry report identified the need for widespread changes to the way patients were treated and services provided and emphasised the need for the services to have a patient- or consumer-centred approach.

    Two key recommendations of the report were:

    1. For a Health Commissioner to promote and uphold consumer rights
    2. For independent advocates who would support consumers to ensure that their rights were upheld.

    The initial focus on health was later extended to include the disability sector, and consumers using disability services.

    Following the Cartwright Report, the Health and Disability Commissioner Act 1994 was enacted to establish the role of an independent Health and Disability Commissioner and an independent advocacy service, and to provide for a code of consumer rights.

    https://advocacy.org.nz/about-the-advocacy-service/

    https://advocacy.org.nz/

  18. SPC 18
    12 November 2024 at 2:02 pm

    Current era.

    Since 2019, a process to improve Mental Health Services, this included a repeal and rewrite of the 1992 Act.

    Since 2019, the Ministry of Health has been working on immediate, short-term improvements under the current legislation. This is alongside our work to understand what issues need to be addressed in creating new mental health legislation for New Zealand.

    On 1 October 2024 the Mental Health Bill was introduced to the House of Representatives. This Bill, if passed, will repeal and replace the Mental Health Act.

    The Bill has a proposed commencement date of 1 July 2027. The Bill will require shifts in practice and how compulsory mental health care is provided. The commencement date is to ensure that affected mental health services and other impacted areas, such as the courts have sufficient time to prepare for new legislation.

    https://www.health.govt.nz/regulation-legislation/mental-health-and-addiction/repealing-and-replacing-the-mental-health-act

    Political parties

    https://www.changingminds.org.nz/storiesdb/party-responses

  20. SPC 20
    12 November 2024 at 4:58 pm

    The bEEb looks at the issue.

    The government response.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ympvmryrmo

    The Royal Commission report phase.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4ng6jjz6jpo