This seems to mean that she expects TVNZ to support the televisionisation of RNZ. Hoever, the future of TVNZ in the medium to long term seems uncertain.
The Labour-led Government will indeed pump cash back into RNZ (referred to as ‘Red Radio’’ by some in the corridors of Parliament).
Under the current plan, RNZ will likely receive between an additional $20-30 million of a new $38m public media fund with the remainder to be divvied out to other media outlets doing investigative journalism through NZ On Air and an overarching public media funding commission.
The idea is for that money to be used by RNZ to launch itself into the television space, complementing its already strong radio offering and growing multimedia presence.
Curran sees it as a ‘lite’ version of Australia’s ABC and says it’s a necessary investment to ensure the survival of public media that has been “hanging on by their fingertips”.
Why is this Government planning to spend about a hundred times as much on this idea as the amount they are apparently planning to take away from the amazingly successful KidsCan charity? From last nights Checkpoint on RNZ we were told that the organisation has been getting about $350,000/year from the State. Their activities include, according to the person running it –
“”We are feeding 30,000 children a week across New Zealand, we’re providing around 25 to 30,000 pairs of shoes, 50,000 pairs of socks, 40,000 raincoats a year,” Ms Chapman said.”
Now it is apparently going to stop getting the money.
The Minister, Tracy Martin, was interviewed on RNZ this morning on Morning Report. Apart from sounding way out of her depth she didn’t seem to know anything about what was going on and her major complaint seemed to be that it was supported by a fund that John Key had implemented. The “Not invented here” syndrome seemed to be very strong in Ms Martin, didn’t it?
The current PM claims that her major aim is to get kids out of poverty. Here is an organisation doing precisely that. She should tell Minister Martin that the support WILL continue. Don’t just try and find something vastly more expensive to replace it so that you can get lots of photo ops. It is doing wonderful work and it shouldn’t be meddled with.
By the way I did love the marvellous word “televisionisation” you used. I doubt that any current dictionary includes it but they should.
So you would scrap any contribution to KidsCan would you?
Doesn’t fit into your view of what is “right”.
They are doing a wonderful job. The Martin woman doesn’t seem to like them because they seem to get money from a small, inexpensive, grant scheme set up by John Key when he was PM.
So what? The grant scheme works and an enormous number of children get assistance. Just because it doesn’t fit into your particular political paradigm doesn’t matter.
Do you mean, by that statement that ONLY the state should be doing it?
I really don’t think that the State is the only source for such help.
The state has a role of course. I see no reason why it need be an exclusive one though. This organisation seems to be helping about 170,000 children and the contribution of the taxpayer seems to be a direct grant of $350,000/year.
Sure, there will be further costs to the taxpayer from tax deductions for donations to them if they are a registered charity. I would much rather see that than the money that goes from the taxpayer to groups such as Greenpeace in the same way.
and its worth remembering that there have been numerous cases of charities where claimed dollar splits havnt held up to scrutiny…..may not be the case here but it is an issue that needs attention.
Fine, but the $350k is only a very small portion of their income.
20% is actually quite good for a charity I believe.
The operational costs that are in the 20% would include collecting and distributing the things like shoes to the kids.
I’ll bet the percentage spent by WINZ, if you exclude the very easy to run National Super is more than that.
Regardless if it’s only a small portion of their income, it’s taxpayer funding, thus the Government has an obligation to ensure taxpayers are receiving value for money.
And while 20% may be a low running cost for a charity, it may be the Government can administer it for far less.
Moreover, going off some of the reports I’ve heard, there are questions surrounding their expenses and running costs.
Executive Julie Chapman told Checkpoint for every dollar it spent, at least 80 cents went to children. That’s a 20% running cost.
Which is massive. IIRC, Our government run hospitals have ~95% going to the patients.
So, that would be more proof of the inefficiency of the private system and that would be increased for every such organisation.
It really is better to make such social welfare organisations a state monopoly. Of course, it’s even better to make it so that it’s not needed but that’s not going to happen any time soon especially since capitalism actually requires and produces poverty.
“Our government run hospitals have ~95% going to the patients”
I would love to know exactly how you work that out.
The major part of the cost of running the Public Hospitals is the wages and salaries of the staff I would think
That is money going to those staff, just as the administration costs of a charity is no doubt the wages and salaries of their staff.
It would be quite silly to call those Hospital costs something going to the patients but not say the same thing about the same sort of expenditure by a charity.
Apart from the very pertinent point that you ignore regarding charitable institutions, have you ever bothered to look at the annual returns for Kidscan.
There is a decided lack of clarity regarding operating expenses and programme costs which account for up to 40% of spending. There is no transparency, there is no credible method for determining if what they deliver is what is required.
Worth looking at the Rusty Radiator awards site to get some kind of insight into reliance on/ and misplaced charity.
You seem to be getting fired up about a decision that hasn’t actually been made yet, alwyn. The funding for this charity was always a fixed term contract (and always a stop-gap). The contract is expiring and there’s no ongoing provision for funding. There’s no moral obligation to extend it.
If you look at her comments, Tracey Martin doesn’t seem to be averse to renewing the funding, but instead of discussing it with her, Kids Can seem to have gone on the attack.
‘The KidsCan charity for children living in poverty spent donors’ money on “champagne lunches” and taxis to and from restaurants, say former staff.
They say hospitality spending was a feature of discontent among workers, along with some salaries being counted in ways that made KidsCan’s administration budget appear lower.’
‘How much of the near two million dollars raised for the KidsCan Stand Tall Trust in TV3’s weekend Telethon will go to meet the “basic needs” of children in poverty? You’d have to hope it’s more than the 19 cents in the dollar that KidsCan managed to spend on its four charitable programmes last year.
Its financial statement to the Charities Commission for 2008 show that the trust raised $1.95 million last year, of which $1.5 million went in operating costs.
[NB: I could have been clearer here: the $1.95m and costs come from the statement for the KidsCan Charitable Trust Group, which consolidates KidsCan’s various activities, including the Big Night In.]
Of $1,351,162 declared in expenses by the KidsCan Trust itself, the largest item was $341,668 in wages for six full-time staff and two part-time, followed by “Events and Promotions” at $293,768.
I accept that in order to administer its programmes, and to attract funding, the trust needs staff. But a bill of nearly $300,000 for events and promotions, and a further $60,000 on advertising and $45,383 on PR? Really?
A total $357,354 went to the charitable programmes themselves — Food for Kids, Raincoats for Kids, Stand Tall, and Shoes for Kids.’
But a bill of nearly $300,000 for events and promotions, and a further $60,000 on advertising and $45,383 on PR? Really?
Yep. Wouldn’t surprise me. Part of the massive inefficiency of the private sector doing this is that they have to inform people that they exist, where to donate and to wine and dine large sponsors.
The government doesn’t need to do all that and so is inherently far more efficient.
Charity is not the solution to society’s needs.
But it can make a few people well off while providing cover for the sociopathic actions of some rich people. You’ll note that many corrupt rich people gave to charity and it was always in the MSM.
The first link doesn’t work.
The second one I knew about.
The gist of it is, of course, “It’s all John Key’s fault”.
Followed by running for cover.
The previous Government couldn’t possibly provide money for it that was ring fenced. A Government can’t commit future Governments to do anything.
Do you mean, by that statement that ONLY the state should be doing it?
I really don’t think that the State is the only source for such help.
I agree. But the point is that the state already funds its own organisations to do this work. It would be wasteful to also fund private organisations to do the same work. A charity is supposed to be funded by charitable giving, not the state.
So what. Why does it matter if the state is or is not doing it? Isn’t it more important that its just done – regardless of who delivers it, so long as the programme makes a positive difference.
Sounds like a case of rigid ideology trumping practical results focused programmes that are make a difference.
Two main reasons, from my position: firstly, direct public oversight. If stories about drinks budgets come up in ministries, the opposition has a field day.
Secondly, private charity is always petulant and biased towards “cute”. Even if child poverty were eliminated, charities working with homeless alcoholics with mental health disorders will still struggle for funding. People bitch about back-room bureaucrats, but ministerial poo-bahs are usually much more logical in their allocations than people who just saw an ad with an Oliver Twist / orphan Annie substitute in it.
Bonus third point: less need to spend the accrued funds to entertain and advertise to gain more funding for the following year.
Why does it matter if the state is or is not doing it?
If the state simply does it then there’s no opportunity for rich people to rort the system while feeling special while giving to charity that, to some degree, lessens the poverty that they created by being rich.
Thanks very much for thisvery informative update on our new media that will finally give us all a independant media to privide good solid transperancy and “investigative jornalism that we need so very badly in this current “Key/Joyce/English type propagandist meadia hype” we had all grown so very tired of over the last nine years, and finally are about to be freed from.
This was good stuff the Ombudsman saw through the tired ranting of the national party smoke screen “secrecy” on the 33 page ‘agreement’. – as we saw Joyce’s $1.7 Billion Dolllar hole.
Hon’ Claire Curran was reportedly as stated here;
“Ombudsman Peter Boshier has backed the Government’s refusal to release the 33-page document in a provisional ruling revealed this morning by Newsroom.
Speaking before the ruling’s release, Curran is critical of National’s written question tactic while claiming it was a good look for the Ombudsman to be investigating the new Government so early.”
Labour deserve a medal for conducting a clever process here.
Claire Curran is a worthy soul that we need to appreciate now, as she was boxed in by the National muck racking of the “secrecy issue between NZF and Labour 33 page agreement’ that only a day ago was put to rest thankfully when the privacy Commissioner backed the government.
Go Claire Go ‘lets do this’.
Let us have a independant public media for a voice of the people again.
Many Thanks to the Australian Rugby union for hiring the best person for there CEO who happens to be a lady I’m sure she will get your Mana back Ka pai.
Email well I have to retrieve some from Gmail Data on the IPCA but ha I can use the official information act to achieve the same objective. Yes Matty I will tour the South Island before I go over seas my wife deserves a holiday after what she been thought. And I no I will get my Mana back. When I do I will buy a house a electric car solar power veggie garden an live a minimualmistic life and keep the good fight for mother nature and equally for everyone on mother earth. I plan to set our requirement period up so I have heaps of food and other things so all our mokos will come and see us regularly and there parents. I no I fight for Maori Alot and don’t talk about the polite of our Pacific cousins but ha what good for the poor is good for OUR Pacific cousins to I want equality for all. Ka pai
Well dopy and sneezy are still pissing in the wind. I love milky bar chocolate and the kid when I was one I no what it will take to get these ass holes off my back Ana to kai
Thanks for the heads up people from the Rock looks like some one is going to be shelling out a heap for loss of potential earnings. Sorry Matty I did not mean to upset you you are a awesome KIWI Kia kaha
Just trying to divert attention away from real issues and Natz disaster legacy and turn it into yet another story about a politician to divide people’s opinions.
And as soon as Labour and Greens start implementing popular policy like cleaning up National’s water debacle and National’s assets sales and land to overseas buyers leaving many in NZ homeless, and the so called war on P from the Natz, more like enablement of P from National, then Labour and Greens will improve on 46%.
Even though Jacinda is considered a ‘communist’ by right wingers she still beats Bill in preferred PM. What does that say?
Certainly as you would expect after being run down for that many years.
Nothing a few billion dollars wouldn’t fix.
The best lesson we ever learned in my era was the stupid temporary market of ACC that Labour under Lange brought in, and reverse it back to a full monopoly under Clark.
Our health system also suffers from chronic underfunding. Since the election I’ve now had a look inside CCDHB and it is shocking. I am convinced that staff are making treatment decisions prioritising economics over effectiveness. This not due to staff incompetence. It is a straight out response to being under resourced. Our hospitals are staffed ny heroes and it’s unsustainable.
I’m currently sourcing diabetes-related foot amputation rates as an example of this. So many of them are unnecessary if the intervention and the right treatment are provided earlier. Worse still many of the diabetes patients ending up being admitted for an amputation have never even seen a podiatrist.
‘The Daily Wire is a politically conservative American news and opinion website founded in 2015 by conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro, who currently serves as Editor-in-Chief. The Daily Wire presents news with a right wing bias in reporting and wording. Virtually every story favors the right and denigrates the left. The Daily Wire has also published false information such as this and this from Ben Shapiro. The Daily Wire is a far right biased news source that is Mixed for factual reporting. (9/2/2016)
Yes and I wonder if the reports are written by your Breitbart friends.
If you want to know WHY it is failing, then look no further than your Tory friends and their plans for it to fail.
The NHS crisis is manufactured by deliberate policies of cuts – so your Breitbart friends’ owners can make a fortune out of the privatisation of UK medicine.
“”We believe there is a real opportunity for private health insurance to help reduce the ever increasing health cost burden on the Government by helping facilitate access to healthcare for Kiwis,” said nib chief executive Rob Hennin.
We are committed to creating new businesses and services that we know Kiwis will value and we’re open to talking with other businesses about opportunities where we can partner to leverage our competitive strengths,” Fairfax Media chief executive Sinead Boucher said.
Done was an example of the publisher’s commitment to find new ways to fund journalism in New Zealand by partnering with industry experts and leveraging the marketing strength Fairfax’s audience brings, Boucher said.
“We think offering comprehensive and cost effective health insurance is another way we can service our monthly audience of 3.4 million New Zealanders.””
Interestingly enough, people with private insurance use more public health resources than those without private insurance. Therefore, private insurers should pay a premium to the government for the extra burden they place on the public health system.
“Things were going pretty well until the 1990s for us, and at that stage neoliberalism really was the order of the day with managerialism in medicine.
“Medicine took a terrible hit, everybody knew that at the time, but very few people did, publically at least, anything about it. They may have complained behind closed doors, they certainly didn’t come out in the media and complain.”
When the age of austerity started to bite in the 1990s, Bagshaw and some of his colleagues openly questioned the philosophy and its consequences.
“We wrote a book called The Patients Are Dying, which chronicled the deaths and problems occurring at Christchurch Hospital, and some of us were threatened with unemployment and all sorts of other things.”
Bagshaw says he tried to voice his concerns through traditional professional channels.
“All of which I found didn’t help. It was just not possible to change things. Whilst you can think globally, you must act locally in order to make change.”
The following extract is from the editorial in the British Medical Journal. You can see how the Herald has screwed the content to get its own anti-commie, red under the bedders, like James, all excited.
As Terry Eagleton argued in Why Marx Was Right (2011), Marxism isn’t about violent world revolution, tyrannical dictatorships, or unachievable utopian fantasies. I think Marx matters to medicine for three reasons. First, Marx offers a critique of society, a method of analysis, that enables explication of disquieting trends in modern medicine and public health—privatised health economies, the power of conservative professional elites, the growth of techno-optimism, philanthrocapitalism, the importance of political determinants of health, global health’s neoimperialist tendencies, product-driven definitions of disease, and the exclusion of stigmatised communities from our societies. These aspects of 21st-century health care are all better investigated and interpreted through a Marxist lens. Second, Marxism defends a set of values. The free self-determination of the individual, an equitable society, the end of exploitation, deepening possibilities for public participation in shaping collective choices, refusing to accept the fixity of human nature and believing in our capacity to change, and keeping a sense of the interdependence and indivisibility of our common humanity. Finally, Marxism is a call to engage, an invitation to join the struggle to protect the values we share. You don’t have to be a Marxist to appreciate Marx. As the centenary of his birth approaches, we might agree that medicine has a great deal to learn from Marx.
The free self-determination of the individual, an equitable society, the end of exploitation, deepening possibilities for public participation in shaping collective choices, refusing to accept the fixity of human nature and believing in our capacity to change, and keeping a sense of the interdependence and indivisibility of our common humanity.
Everything after that first one fills right-wingers with fear and loathing. I’m not surprised the Herald editor shat his pants.
James, I think it’s interesting that Barnaby Joyce is (in the article you so helpfully linked to) demonstrating exactly the behaviour he is so helpfully warning Jacinda Ardern against:
1) Interfering in another country’s domestic affairs (how is it his business if we offer to take refugees that his country has refused?);
2) Using the media to talk to another government, rather than contacting them directly. He says, “And if you are going to talk to them at all, talk to them quietly and discreetly, off the record, not via telephone, not via TV.” (and note that Ardern DID speak to Turnball directly whereas Joyce is using Newstalk ZB, as relayed by The Herald).
James clearly approves of some of the most racist policies in the world towards refugees.
No wonder. His Breitbart friends told him to think like that.
Hardly – though the last men standing as the Turnbull government shambles its way towards the dustbin of history are desperately looking for anyone else to blame.
Point out something inaccurate in the link I posted ?
Oh, there’s nothing inaccurate in there – it makes a pretty clear case that Australia is currently run by the most appalling shits and Ardern needs to take seriously the threat that said appalling shits pose to NZ. It’s just not clear how you come to see it as some kind of indictment of Ardern.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it agian: every year NZ should find the two biggest jerks in the Australian government, and grant them a one-year-only, unrenouncable citizenship to NZ.
Kepp your friends close, make your enemies citizens 🙂
Dutton definitely needs an urgent grant of NZ citizenship. The one-year-only thing is also a good idea, as there’d be a significant risk of him being deported here for poor character.
An application to remove 18 million litres of water a day from a small Bay of Plenty town and send it offshore has been rejected by the Bay of Plenty Regional Council.
NZ Aquifer managing director Roydon Hartnett, who is representing the two companies, said the council advised it of a “very minor administrative change” where they asked it to separate the extraction and drilling activities. The company would change it before resubmitting the application this week.
Hartnett said this would slightly delay plans as they had been expecting a decision this year.
“We are now hopeful of hearing positive news from the regional council by mid-January.”
Hartnett was behind the two previous attempts at setting up water bottling plants in South Waikato and Ashburton.
The latest proposal is more ambitious than his previous attempts as it wants to take almost three times the amount of water Hartnett’s company Blue Spring Limited proposed extracting from Putaruru’s Blue Spring in the Waihou River.
NZ Pure Blue Springs Ltd withdrew its application in October after Raukawa Iwi refused to support it because of the significant adverse affects to the spring.
The company behind a proposal to drain millions of litres of water a day from a popular spring to sell overseas has revealed it is only 39 per cent New Zealand-owned.
NZ Pure Blue, also known as NZ Pure Blue Springs Limited, has lodged a resource consent application to drain 6.9 million litres form the Putaruru Blue Spring in the Waikato to bottle locally and offshore.
A source informed the NZ Herald that the company told members of the local iwi, the Raukawa Settlement Trust, at a meeting in Tokoroa on Monday night that 61 per cent of the company was owned by overseas investors including 10 per cent Australian and some Chinese.
They are taking water from the ground water or out of “deep well ejection?
If they take water from the deep aquifer areas and leave the shallow aquifer water for municipal authorities because the water quality is so bad that it will be rejected by overseas experts seeking ‘pristine water’ so there is where these “water bandits” are doing now.
We must have them all rejected from our country as also the water is sent by trucks over our roads to ports ruining our roads and residential areas near roads they transport our prinstine water.
So we are being screwed all directions by these “water bandits” and paying to fix the roads they are wrecking too????.
Attn Penny Bright.Watching a recent video about Key,I saw when you challenged him at a public meeting in Papatoetoe about your O.I.A request regarding,exactly who NZ has borrowed billions off.
He was his usual evasive self,but did you ever find out?
When Obama was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, we never heard the end of it. Maybe that farce explains the silence when such an award is won by someone who actually deserves it….
Jeremy Corbyn will lose the next election in the UK and the Tories will win.
The Tories cannot be doing any worse than they are at present: each and every minister and PM May screw up at every opportunity.
Yet Corbyn is behind in the polls,
Arctic climate ‘report card’ reveals ‘rapid and dramatic changes’ to the polar environment.
‘The devastating impact of climate change in the polar regions has been confirmed by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) annual Arctic Report Card
Authors from the American scientific agency concluded that 2017 was not a record-breaking year in terms of climate extremes, there was still evidence that the Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the global average.
The widespread environmental changes that arise as a result of this warming are beginning to define “an emerging new normal” in the region, the report said.’
‘Reading this, I feel physically sick. I feel so anxious. I’m not sure how many more years or months I’m going to be able to work daily on climate change. Today is one of those days.’
Well that disappeared so I’ll put it up as it’s a great bit of Christmas music.
Nice presentation by great choir with young boy sopranos at Kings College, Cambridge and they are really throwing themselves into it with verve. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NNy289k6Oc
I will be unpopular but will give the Portsmouth Sinfonia’s version an airing.
There is a lot of goodwill going into performing this music, and by the audience. A lot of the choir turned up at the Albert Hall on the day and swelled the numbers.
Yes a lot of my elderly clients are spending Christmas by them selves I talk to them about it. That is the reason I will have a plan to have a culture that will encourage vist from our children an mokos. Many thanks to all my viewers for giving ECO the Mana to advocate for Lady’s equality human rights an OUR environmental sustainability for our World. Many thanks to all the people who have got my back at home in NZ you show that the good logical Kiwi people are still prevalent in OUR beautiful country. Most of our international stars display these qualities. Ka pai
Many thanks to to all the good information and guidance my fellow bloggers post here on the standard I have a couple of Yodas the first star Wars movie was released when I was 8 Im a Sci fi fan just to busy to watch last time I went to the cinema I fell asleep in 10 minutes my wife was not happy lol.
Kai kaha
Have a good Christmas eco maori, hope you can get a dvd Christmas special or borrow some and then you can fall asleep in front of as many movies as you feel like.
I suppose everyone has seen this nasty sour, threatening little piece from the man with the nasty, sour face – Barnaby Joyce. Thank goodness he has broken his ties with this country. Australia is the place for him for sure.
There is something about that name Joyce that is seeming to be aggressive as our “Steven Joyce” is another one like “nasty sour, threatening little piece from the man with the nasty, sour face – Barnaby Joyce”
While looking for something entirely different I found a film called Barnaby Jones.
It must have been in his Mum and Dad’s mind when they named Ozzie Barnaby Joyce.
The blurb about it :
‘Barnaby Jones (TV Series 1973–1980) – IMDb http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069557/
Crime · The exploits of milk-swilling, geriatric private eye Barnaby Jones. ..’
Milk-swilling and geriatric. Sounds like a lot more laughs than Ozzie Joyce.
cleangreen
Related? How many in politics have connections with others in leading roles, or previous politicians? Family lines, professionals beget the same, tradies the same? Roger Douglas and Bill Anderton are a pair with a family connection for instance.
And able to look out for each other. Bill English has brothers in positions of authority.
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 ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Tuesday, March 19:Kāinga Ora’s dry rot The Spinoff DailyBill McKibben on ‘Climate Superfunds’ making Big Oil pay for climate damage The Crucial YearsPreston Mui on returning to 1980s-style productivity growth NoahpinionAndy Boenau on NIMBYs needing unusual bedfellows Urbanism SpeakeasyNed Resnikoff's case ...
Negative yesterday, negative today. Negative all year, according to one departing reader telling me I’ve grown strident and predictable. Fair enough. If it’s any help, every time I go to write about a certain topic that begins with C and ends with arrrrs, I do brace myself and ask: Again? Are ...
Bryce Edwards writes – It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support ...
Inspirational: The Family of Man is a glorious hymn to human equality, but, more than that, it is a clarion call to human freedom. Because equality, unleavened by liberty, is a broken piano, an unstrung harp; upon which the songs of fraternity will never be played.“Somebody must have been telling lies about ...
Tax Lawyer Barbara Edmonds vs Emperor Justinian I- Nolo Contendere: False historical explanations of pivotal events are very far from being inconsequential.WHEN BARBARA EDMONDS made reference to the Roman Empire, my ears pricked up. It is, lamentably, very rare to hear a politician admit to any kind of familiarity ...
It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support for the various parties in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Housing Minister Chris Bishop delivered news – packed with the ingredients to enflame political passions – worthy of supplanting Winston Peters in headline writers’ priorities. He popped up at the post-Cabinet press conference to promise a crackdown on unruly and antisocial state housing tenants. His ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The Reserve Bank is advertising for a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion advisor. The Bank has one mandate – to keep inflation between one and three percent. It has failed in that and is only slowly getting inflation back down to the upper limit. Will it ...
Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency Waka KotahiThe fact that a ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: Gavin Jacobson talks to Thomas Piketty 10 years on from Capital in the 21st CenturyThe SalvoLocal scoop: Green MP’s business being investigated over migrant exploitation claims StuffSteve KilgallonLocal deep-dive: The commercial contractors making money from School ...
It’s a home - but Kāinga Ora tenants accused of “abusing the privilege” may lose it. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government announced a crackdown on Kāinga Ora tenants who were unruly and/or behind on their rent, with Housing Minister Chris Bishop saying a place in a state ...
This is a guest post by Connor Sharp of Surface Light Rail Light rail in Auckland: A way forward sooner than you think With the coup de grâce of Auckland Light Rail (ALR) earlier this year, and the shift of the government’s priorities to roads, roads, and more roads, it ...
Note: As a paid-up Webworm member, I’ve recorded this Webworm as a mini-podcast for you as well. Some of you said you liked this option - so I aim to provide it when I get a chance to record! Read more ...
TL;DR: In my ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Monday, March 18:IKEA is accused of planting big forests in New Zealand to green-wash; REDD-MonitorA City for People takes a well-deserved victory lap over Wellington’s pro-YIMBY District Plan votes; A City for PeopleSteven Anastasiou takes a close look at the sticky ...
Buzz from the Beehive Here’s hoping for a lively post-cabinet press conference when the PM and – perhaps – some of his ministers tell us what was discussed at their meeting today. Until then, Point of Order has precious little Beehive news to report after its latest monitoring of the ...
David Farrar writes – We now have almost all 2023 data in, which has allowed me to update my annual table of how labour went against its promises. This is basically their final report card. The promiseThe result Build 100,000 affordable homes over 10 ...
I’m a bit worried that I’ve started a previous newsletter with the words “just when you think they couldn’t get any worse…” Seems lately that I could begin pretty much every issue with that opening. Such is the nature of our coalition government that they seem to be outdoing each ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. ...
Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and inclusion are offered in daylight, much of our culture ...
Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in an exit interview with Q+A yesterday the Government can and should sustain more debt to invest in infrastructure for future generations. Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 6:36am: Read more ...
Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. It is more than just a happy ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to March 18 include:China’s Foreign Minister visiting Wellington today;A post-cabinet news conference this afternoon; the resumption of Parliament on Tuesday for two weeks before Easter;retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson gives his valedictory speech in Parliament; ...
New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters’s state-of-the-nation speech on Sunday was really a state-of-Winston-First speech. He barely mentioned any of the Government’s key policies and could not even wholly endorse its signature income tax cuts. Instead, he rehearsed all of his complaints about the Ardern Government, including an extraordinary claim ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
“I’ve been internalising a really complicated situation in my head.”When they kept telling us we should wait until we get to know him, were they taking the piss? Was it a case of, if you think this is bad, wait till you get to know the real Christopher, after the ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
.“$10 and a target that bleeds” - Bleeding Targets for Under $10!.Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.This government appears hell-bent on either scrapping life-saving legislation or reintroducing things that - frustrated critics insist - will be dangerous and likely ...
“It hardly strikes me as fair to criticise a government for doing exactly what it said it was going to do. For actually keeping its promises.”THUNDER WAS PLAYING TAG with lightning flashes amongst the distant peaks. Its rolling cadences interrupted by the here-I-come-here-I-go Doppler effect of the occasional passing car. ...
Subversive & Disruptive Technologies: Just as happened with that other great regulator of the masses, the Medieval Church, the advent of a new and hard-to-control technology – the Internet – is weakening the ties that bind. Then, and now, those who enjoy a monopoly on the dissemination of lies, cannot and will ...
Been Here Before: To find the precedents for what this Coalition Government is proposing, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.THE COALITION GOVERNMENT has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. It remains, however, an angry government. It ...
Bob Edlin writes – And what is the world watching today…? The email newsletter from Associated Press which landed in our mailbox early this morning advised: In the news today: The father of a school shooter has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter; prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money case ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is another Green MP on their way out? And are the Greens severely tarnished by another integrity scandal? For the second time in three months, the Green Party has secretly suspended an MP over integrity issues. Mystery is surrounding the party’s decision to ...
For the last few years, the Green Party has been the party that has managed to avoid the plague of multiple scandals that have beleaguered other political parties. It appears that their luck has run out with a second scandal which, unfortunately for them, coincided with Golraz Ghahraman, the focus ...
TL;DR: The six newsey things that stood out to me as of 6:46am on Saturday, March 16.Andy Foster has accidentally allowed a Labour/Green amendment to cut road user chargers for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which the Government might accept; NZ HeraldThomas CoughlanSimeon Brown has rejected a plea from Westport ...
What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
TL;DR:Shaun Baker on Wynyard Quarter's transformation. Magdalene Taylor on the problem with smart phones. How private equity are now all over reinsurance. Dylan Cleaver on rugby and CTE. Emily Atkin on ‘Big Meat’ looking like ‘Big Oil’.Bernard’s six-stack of substacks at 6pm on March 15Photo by Jeppe Hove Jensen ...
Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it: We want our country to be a ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation : The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop:Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
"The Government is moving quickly to realise an additional $46 million in tariff savings in the EU market this season for Kiwi exporters,” Minister for Trade and Agriculture, Todd McClay says. Parliament is set, this week, to complete the final legislative processes required to bring the New Zealand – European ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
Pacific Media Watch Earthwise hosts Lois and Martin Griffiths. Earthwise presenters Lois and Martin Griffiths on Plains FM 96.9 community radio talk to Dr David Robie, a New Zealand author, independent journalist and media educator with a passion for the Asia-Pacific region. David talks about the struggle to raise awareness ...
Pacific Media Watch Ismail al-Ghoul, an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent who was held for 12 hours at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, says Israeli forces rounded up Palestinian journalists at the facility and made them kneel on the ground for hours, while naked and blindfolded. “The occupation forces handcuffed and blindfolded us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute chinasong, Shutterstock Electricity customers in four Australian states can breathe a sigh of relief. After two years in a row of 20% price increases, power prices have finally stabilised. In many places they’re ...
Chumbawamba have reportedly issued the deputy PM a cease-and-desist notice after he used their song 'Tubthumping' before his state of the nation speech. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney kitzcorner/Shutterstock The assertion from Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Shutterstock Why are musicians so keen to get played on the radio? It can’t be because of the money. In Australia they are paid at rates so low they ...
"Farmers make a point not to tell our urban cousins how to live, yet Chlöe from central Auckland is hell-bent on having her say about farmers," says ACT Rural Communities spokesman Mark Cameron. “On her first day in the House as Green ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Curran, Associate Professor of Ecology, Lincoln University, New Zealand Getty Images/Gerald Corsi In the latest move to reform environmental laws in New Zealand, the coalition government has introduced a bill to fast-track consenting processes for projects deemed to ...
Uber has argued it does not have as much control over drivers as the unions suggest, and wants a judgment ruling that drivers are employees and not contractors set aside and sent back to the Employment Court. The 2022 ruling followed a three-week hearing in which four drivers sought to ...
What can and can’t be purchased by disabled people or their carers has been slashed in an effort by the Ministry of Disabled People Whaikaha to save money. The purchasing guidelines, a set of rules that sets out what can be purchased using the various streams of Government disability funding, ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Tod Wright and Hien Nguyen, Fiscal incidence in New Zealand: The effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes in tax year 2018/19 . Analyses of the distributional impact of taxation and government ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Cory Davis, Boston Hart and Benjamin Stubbing, Household cost-of-living impacts from the Emissions Trading Scheme and using transfers to mitigate regressive outcomes . This Analytical Note ...
A coalition of public transport and climate organisations, united as ‘Transport for All’, is actively opposing the government’s transport proposals. The draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) includes plans for higher fares for public transport, ...
Greater Wellington is inviting feedback on proposed changes to its Revenue and Financing Policy. The Revenue and Financing Policy covers the Council’s various sources of funding, and how the cost of services is shared across the region. This includes ...
Labour has conceded it could have done more to deal with disruptive state housing tenants while in government but says the current coalition is going too far. ...
The band has asked their record label to issue a cease and desist to stop the NZ First leader using their 1997 hit to support his ‘misguided political views’. “I get knocked down, but I get up again,” blared through the speakers on Sunday as Winston Peters took the stage ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
The long-running Wellington music festival is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness and not enough on the Homegrown-ness.There is something about Homegrown that’s difficult to place. A barely perceptible-ness. Like feeling a ghost is watching you from the corner of the room but when you look, there’s nothing there. ...
The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor reveals that fewer New Zealanders believe crime / law and order is one of the top issues facing our country. In 2018, Ipsos New Zealand started tracking the key issues facing New Zealand. In this wave ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Budgets and Government, Grattan Institute Australia’s political donations rules are woefully inadequate, but donations reform is finally on the agenda. The federal government has signalled its interest in reform and will soon begin briefing MPs on its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University Naiyana Somchitkaeo/Shutterstock A recent study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has linked microplastics with risk to human health. The study ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University Global climate records were shattered in 2023, from air and sea temperatures to sea-level rise and sea-ice extent. Scores of countries recorded their hottest year ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a teacher explains why he and his partner are in frugal mode – and how they’re making it work. Gender: Male Age: 35Ethnicity: Pākehā Role: I am an intermediate school teacher and my partner is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bendall, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University Binge Mary & George, the new British television drama series, depicts the real-life story of Mary Villiers and her son George, and their social climbing at the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Nassios, Associate Professor, Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University This article is part of The Conversation’s series examining the housing crisis. Read the other articles in the series here. Australian state and federal governments spend money in many ways to ...
The finance minister is denying that there’s a $5.6b shortfall in paying for the government’s campaign promises, including tax cuts. At his post-cabinet press conference yesterday, the PM refused to rule out new taxes to pay for the cuts, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s ...
Kāinga Ora tenants abused by their neighbours are doubting the government's crackdown on disruptive tenants will make a difference on their behaviour. ...
Kāinga Ora is New Zealand’s biggest residential landlord, housing more than 180,000 vulnerable people in more than 67,000 properties. Yesterday the government announced a crackdown on its tenants who fall behind on rent. One longtime Kāinga Ora tenant shares her experience.For 18 years I lived in a 1960s standalone ...
Why does this myth persist, and what’s the real reason our skin is suffering?It’s one of the biggest international grievances New Zealanders hold, up there with the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and 1981’s underarm incident. We’re quick to tell international travellers that the world’s pollution led to the ...
When the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act was introduced in 2009 it was firmly targeted at gangs and drugs. The legislation means police no longer need a conviction to seize assets that criminals can’t prove were paid for legitimately, as long as their alleged offences are punishable by more than a ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A[quiz],DIV[quiz],A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Tuesday 19 March appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Bob’s relationship with certain members of Lincoln’s academic staff continued to deteriorate in the 1990s. Others supported him publicly, though articles such as Roland Clark’s 1993 piece in Growing Today cannot have pleased the university management. Clark wrote that Bob was selling onions from the Biological Husbandry Unit to a ...
SailGP’s races feature in-your-face action, with agile, hydro-foiling catamarans tacking and jibing for the title over several days. However, public comments ahead of the global series’ return to New Zealand have left this past year’s controversy in the shadows, as a key appointment attracts criticism from dolphin advocates. A year ...
Opinion: We are fast approaching a fundamental change in prisons. As the number of people on custodial remand looks set to overtake the number of sentenced prisoners, the main function of prisons in New Zealand may become incarcerating un-sentenced people who may not be guilty of offending. We have already ...
A huge seven months lies in store for the White Ferns, beginning this week with the visit of England and culminating with the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in September and October. Starting on Tuesday in Dunedin, the world ranked No. 2 visitors will play five T20s and three ODIs, ...
Opinion: In a move that has shocked road safety advocates across the country, the new Minister of Transport, Simeon Brown, is poised to abandon the previous government’s speed limit reduction policy, particularly around schools. Even more alarmingly, he wants school speed limits to be variable rather than full-time, arguing ...
Auckland Council is opposing a fast-track development backed by Sir John Kirwan and Spark NZ, because it doesn’t meet stringent new climate adaptation requirements The post Surf-data centre faces new 3.8C climate warming rules appeared first on Newsroom. ...
The letters, which were published last week, were addressed to Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) Chairperson Megawati Sukarnoputri, National Democrat Party (NasDem) Chairperson Surya Paloh, National Awakening Party (PKB) Chairperson Muhaimin Iskandar, Justice and Prosperity Party (PKS) President Ahmad Syaikhu and United Development Party (PPP) Chairperson Muhammad Mardiono. In ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
The government says it still intends to deliver tax cuts by July, but will not lock them in until they have got them past their coalition partners. ...
As reported yesterday on newsroom, among other things Clare Curran says that the government will be upping funding for RNZ in support of them launching themselves into the television space.
This seems to mean that she expects TVNZ to support the televisionisation of RNZ. Hoever, the future of TVNZ in the medium to long term seems uncertain.
Why is this Government planning to spend about a hundred times as much on this idea as the amount they are apparently planning to take away from the amazingly successful KidsCan charity? From last nights Checkpoint on RNZ we were told that the organisation has been getting about $350,000/year from the State. Their activities include, according to the person running it –
“”We are feeding 30,000 children a week across New Zealand, we’re providing around 25 to 30,000 pairs of shoes, 50,000 pairs of socks, 40,000 raincoats a year,” Ms Chapman said.”
Now it is apparently going to stop getting the money.
The Minister, Tracy Martin, was interviewed on RNZ this morning on Morning Report. Apart from sounding way out of her depth she didn’t seem to know anything about what was going on and her major complaint seemed to be that it was supported by a fund that John Key had implemented. The “Not invented here” syndrome seemed to be very strong in Ms Martin, didn’t it?
The current PM claims that her major aim is to get kids out of poverty. Here is an organisation doing precisely that. She should tell Minister Martin that the support WILL continue. Don’t just try and find something vastly more expensive to replace it so that you can get lots of photo ops. It is doing wonderful work and it shouldn’t be meddled with.
By the way I did love the marvellous word “televisionisation” you used. I doubt that any current dictionary includes it but they should.
Private charity is never a substitute for public welfare
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/31/francis-maude-big-society-charity
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/03/21/private_charity_and_the_safety_net_why_philanthropy_can_t_replace_government.html
http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/30/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20140330
So you would scrap any contribution to KidsCan would you?
Doesn’t fit into your view of what is “right”.
They are doing a wonderful job. The Martin woman doesn’t seem to like them because they seem to get money from a small, inexpensive, grant scheme set up by John Key when he was PM.
So what? The grant scheme works and an enormous number of children get assistance. Just because it doesn’t fit into your particular political paradigm doesn’t matter.
They do good work but it is work the state should be doing.
Do you mean, by that statement that ONLY the state should be doing it?
I really don’t think that the State is the only source for such help.
The state has a role of course. I see no reason why it need be an exclusive one though. This organisation seems to be helping about 170,000 children and the contribution of the taxpayer seems to be a direct grant of $350,000/year.
Sure, there will be further costs to the taxpayer from tax deductions for donations to them if they are a registered charity. I would much rather see that than the money that goes from the taxpayer to groups such as Greenpeace in the same way.
Executive Julie Chapman told Checkpoint for every dollar it spent, at least 80 cents went to children. That’s a 20% running cost.
Therefore, it may be the Government are considering whether there are more efficient ways to ensure more of that funding gets to the kids in need.
and its worth remembering that there have been numerous cases of charities where claimed dollar splits havnt held up to scrutiny…..may not be the case here but it is an issue that needs attention.
Indeed.
Fine, but the $350k is only a very small portion of their income.
20% is actually quite good for a charity I believe.
The operational costs that are in the 20% would include collecting and distributing the things like shoes to the kids.
I’ll bet the percentage spent by WINZ, if you exclude the very easy to run National Super is more than that.
Regardless if it’s only a small portion of their income, it’s taxpayer funding, thus the Government has an obligation to ensure taxpayers are receiving value for money.
And while 20% may be a low running cost for a charity, it may be the Government can administer it for far less.
Moreover, going off some of the reports I’ve heard, there are questions surrounding their expenses and running costs.
Which is massive. IIRC, Our government run hospitals have ~95% going to the patients.
So, that would be more proof of the inefficiency of the private system and that would be increased for every such organisation.
It really is better to make such social welfare organisations a state monopoly. Of course, it’s even better to make it so that it’s not needed but that’s not going to happen any time soon especially since capitalism actually requires and produces poverty.
“Our government run hospitals have ~95% going to the patients”
I would love to know exactly how you work that out.
The major part of the cost of running the Public Hospitals is the wages and salaries of the staff I would think
That is money going to those staff, just as the administration costs of a charity is no doubt the wages and salaries of their staff.
It would be quite silly to call those Hospital costs something going to the patients but not say the same thing about the same sort of expenditure by a charity.
Probably.
95% goes to supporting the patients. 5% goes on administration. A doctor’s salary is supporting the patients.
A fairly large part of the private sector is spending on advertising, functions and other useless stuff that a government department doesn’t need.
Apart from the very pertinent point that you ignore regarding charitable institutions, have you ever bothered to look at the annual returns for Kidscan.
There is a decided lack of clarity regarding operating expenses and programme costs which account for up to 40% of spending. There is no transparency, there is no credible method for determining if what they deliver is what is required.
Worth looking at the Rusty Radiator awards site to get some kind of insight into reliance on/ and misplaced charity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbqA6o8_WC0
Even from their own records., a lot of money does not go to need children….
https://www.kidscan.org.nz/sites/default/files/Annual%20Report%202015%20Web%20copy.pdf
Yes Ed. Meant to include charity commission links to their annual accounts, but was interrupted and forget. Thanks for doing so.
You seem to be getting fired up about a decision that hasn’t actually been made yet, alwyn. The funding for this charity was always a fixed term contract (and always a stop-gap). The contract is expiring and there’s no ongoing provision for funding. There’s no moral obligation to extend it.
If you look at her comments, Tracey Martin doesn’t seem to be averse to renewing the funding, but instead of discussing it with her, Kids Can seem to have gone on the attack.
Must be scared of losing their slush fund.
Their accounts are interesting.
2015
Administration Costs $1,290,059
Operating Costs $2,140,927
Their accounts are interesting.
2015
Administration Costs $1,290,059
Operating Costs $2,140,927
Programme Costs $ 4,609,456
Maybe these are some of the ‘operating costs’.
‘The KidsCan charity for children living in poverty spent donors’ money on “champagne lunches” and taxis to and from restaurants, say former staff.
They say hospitality spending was a feature of discontent among workers, along with some salaries being counted in ways that made KidsCan’s administration budget appear lower.’
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11449523
Hopefully they’ve improved since 2009.
‘How much of the near two million dollars raised for the KidsCan Stand Tall Trust in TV3’s weekend Telethon will go to meet the “basic needs” of children in poverty? You’d have to hope it’s more than the 19 cents in the dollar that KidsCan managed to spend on its four charitable programmes last year.
Its financial statement to the Charities Commission for 2008 show that the trust raised $1.95 million last year, of which $1.5 million went in operating costs.
[NB: I could have been clearer here: the $1.95m and costs come from the statement for the KidsCan Charitable Trust Group, which consolidates KidsCan’s various activities, including the Big Night In.]
Of $1,351,162 declared in expenses by the KidsCan Trust itself, the largest item was $341,668 in wages for six full-time staff and two part-time, followed by “Events and Promotions” at $293,768.
I accept that in order to administer its programmes, and to attract funding, the trust needs staff. But a bill of nearly $300,000 for events and promotions, and a further $60,000 on advertising and $45,383 on PR? Really?
A total $357,354 went to the charitable programmes themselves — Food for Kids, Raincoats for Kids, Stand Tall, and Shoes for Kids.’
https://publicaddress.net/hardnews/where-your-money-goes/
Sponsors & Supporters include
The Coffee Club
Heinz Watties
Nestle
Westfield NZ
Wonder if these companies pay the minimum wage?
Be warned Ed, from someone who has been there…scrutinising the Annual Returns of “charities” is a down the rabbit hole exercise.
I’ve been there with IHC/Idea Services, Spectrum Care, Carers NZ, DPA NZ, NZDSN, et al….
….path to misery and disillusionment mate.
My point exactly.
Charity is not the solution to society’s needs.
Yep. Wouldn’t surprise me. Part of the massive inefficiency of the private sector doing this is that they have to inform people that they exist, where to donate and to wine and dine large sponsors.
The government doesn’t need to do all that and so is inherently far more efficient.
But it can make a few people well off while providing cover for the sociopathic actions of some rich people. You’ll note that many corrupt rich people gave to charity and it was always in the MSM.
And money for perks and drinks…..
I’m predicting you read none of the articles I linked.
The first link doesn’t work.
The second one I knew about.
The gist of it is, of course, “It’s all John Key’s fault”.
Followed by running for cover.
The previous Government couldn’t possibly provide money for it that was ring fenced. A Government can’t commit future Governments to do anything.
Do you mean, by that statement that ONLY the state should be doing it?
I really don’t think that the State is the only source for such help.
I agree. But the point is that the state already funds its own organisations to do this work. It would be wasteful to also fund private organisations to do the same work. A charity is supposed to be funded by charitable giving, not the state.
So what. Why does it matter if the state is or is not doing it? Isn’t it more important that its just done – regardless of who delivers it, so long as the programme makes a positive difference.
Sounds like a case of rigid ideology trumping practical results focused programmes that are make a difference.
And that’s just dumb.
Two main reasons, from my position: firstly, direct public oversight. If stories about drinks budgets come up in ministries, the opposition has a field day.
Secondly, private charity is always petulant and biased towards “cute”. Even if child poverty were eliminated, charities working with homeless alcoholics with mental health disorders will still struggle for funding. People bitch about back-room bureaucrats, but ministerial poo-bahs are usually much more logical in their allocations than people who just saw an ad with an Oliver Twist / orphan Annie substitute in it.
Bonus third point: less need to spend the accrued funds to entertain and advertise to gain more funding for the following year.
+111
If the state simply does it then there’s no opportunity for rich people to rort the system while feeling special while giving to charity that, to some degree, lessens the poverty that they created by being rich.
…bonus 4th point: you don’t have to pay charities to clip the ticket when you’ve already paid public servants to administer the health budget.
Bonus 5th point: the greedy right wing low-lives that caused poverty and misery in the first place don’t get to lord it over their betters.
100% Caroyln
Thanks very much for thisvery informative update on our new media that will finally give us all a independant media to privide good solid transperancy and “investigative jornalism that we need so very badly in this current “Key/Joyce/English type propagandist meadia hype” we had all grown so very tired of over the last nine years, and finally are about to be freed from.
This was good stuff the Ombudsman saw through the tired ranting of the national party smoke screen “secrecy” on the 33 page ‘agreement’. – as we saw Joyce’s $1.7 Billion Dolllar hole.
Hon’ Claire Curran was reportedly as stated here;
“Ombudsman Peter Boshier has backed the Government’s refusal to release the 33-page document in a provisional ruling revealed this morning by Newsroom.
Speaking before the ruling’s release, Curran is critical of National’s written question tactic while claiming it was a good look for the Ombudsman to be investigating the new Government so early.”
Labour deserve a medal for conducting a clever process here.
Nice coverage there Carolyn,
Claire Curran is a worthy soul that we need to appreciate now, as she was boxed in by the National muck racking of the “secrecy issue between NZF and Labour 33 page agreement’ that only a day ago was put to rest thankfully when the privacy Commissioner backed the government.
Go Claire Go ‘lets do this’.
Let us have a independant public media for a voice of the people again.
Many Thanks to the Australian Rugby union for hiring the best person for there CEO who happens to be a lady I’m sure she will get your Mana back Ka pai.
Email well I have to retrieve some from Gmail Data on the IPCA but ha I can use the official information act to achieve the same objective. Yes Matty I will tour the South Island before I go over seas my wife deserves a holiday after what she been thought. And I no I will get my Mana back. When I do I will buy a house a electric car solar power veggie garden an live a minimualmistic life and keep the good fight for mother nature and equally for everyone on mother earth. I plan to set our requirement period up so I have heaps of food and other things so all our mokos will come and see us regularly and there parents. I no I fight for Maori Alot and don’t talk about the polite of our Pacific cousins but ha what good for the poor is good for OUR Pacific cousins to I want equality for all. Ka pai
Well dopy and sneezy are still pissing in the wind. I love milky bar chocolate and the kid when I was one I no what it will take to get these ass holes off my back Ana to kai
Thanks for the heads up people from the Rock looks like some one is going to be shelling out a heap for loss of potential earnings. Sorry Matty I did not mean to upset you you are a awesome KIWI Kia kaha
Forget Vogue – Comrade Jacinda makes the British Medical Journal.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11958258
Just trying to divert attention away from real issues and Natz disaster legacy and turn it into yet another story about a politician to divide people’s opinions.
Peoples opinions are already divided – thats why National poll at 46%.
But it dosnt surprise me that you have nothing to say on the issue put forward.
What was the issue you want to discuss James?
The issues in the link which I’m guessing you did not read.
So which is issue you want to discuss There we several in the article?
(PS prove ED wrong)
He never discusses issues. He just talks about polls and repeats personal attacks by other rwnjs.
Yes Ed you have it in one
The Man talks rubbish sadly and offers no real value sadly.
I think these national clingons have completetly gone nuts.
Asking him a specific issue is a sure way to stop him rambling on.
You win ed. No reply from James.
And as soon as Labour and Greens start implementing popular policy like cleaning up National’s water debacle and National’s assets sales and land to overseas buyers leaving many in NZ homeless, and the so called war on P from the Natz, more like enablement of P from National, then Labour and Greens will improve on 46%.
Even though Jacinda is considered a ‘communist’ by right wingers she still beats Bill in preferred PM. What does that say?
Never were more true words spoken savenz – friend. 100%
Nye Bevan, founder of the British NHS:
“I’m real proud of the National Health Service.
It’s a real piece of socialism.
It’s a real piece of Christianity too.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCAyUxY0Cm0
and its failing:
https://www.dailywire.com/news/14470/7-things-you-need-know-about-britains-failing-aaron-bandler#
Certainly as you would expect after being run down for that many years.
Nothing a few billion dollars wouldn’t fix.
The best lesson we ever learned in my era was the stupid temporary market of ACC that Labour under Lange brought in, and reverse it back to a full monopoly under Clark.
Just checked James’s source.
Now I get where his unhinged views come from.
James isn’t wrong.
And our health system isn’t always something to write home about.
But it’s sure better than the capitalist version.
Our health system also suffers from chronic underfunding. Since the election I’ve now had a look inside CCDHB and it is shocking. I am convinced that staff are making treatment decisions prioritising economics over effectiveness. This not due to staff incompetence. It is a straight out response to being under resourced. Our hospitals are staffed ny heroes and it’s unsustainable.
I’m currently sourcing diabetes-related foot amputation rates as an example of this. So many of them are unnecessary if the intervention and the right treatment are provided earlier. Worse still many of the diabetes patients ending up being admitted for an amputation have never even seen a podiatrist.
A commentary on your news source.
‘The Daily Wire is a politically conservative American news and opinion website founded in 2015 by conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro, who currently serves as Editor-in-Chief. The Daily Wire presents news with a right wing bias in reporting and wording. Virtually every story favors the right and denigrates the left. The Daily Wire has also published false information such as this and this from Ben Shapiro. The Daily Wire is a far right biased news source that is Mixed for factual reporting. (9/2/2016)
Updated (8/16/2017)’
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-daily-wire/
Ben Shapiro sounds like a piece of work….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Shapiro
That is (generally) a fair comment.
However they have listed numerous sources and provided links in this specific article (from a wide variety of sources).
But if you google NHS failing you will get thousands of other links to read – plenty pointing out just how screwed it is.
Yes and I wonder if the reports are written by your Breitbart friends.
If you want to know WHY it is failing, then look no further than your Tory friends and their plans for it to fail.
The NHS crisis is manufactured by deliberate policies of cuts – so your Breitbart friends’ owners can make a fortune out of the privatisation of UK medicine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe4Tlccbx58
The ultimate aim is this…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/99807252/fairfax-media-nib-launch-health-insurance-partnership-done
“”We believe there is a real opportunity for private health insurance to help reduce the ever increasing health cost burden on the Government by helping facilitate access to healthcare for Kiwis,” said nib chief executive Rob Hennin.
We are committed to creating new businesses and services that we know Kiwis will value and we’re open to talking with other businesses about opportunities where we can partner to leverage our competitive strengths,” Fairfax Media chief executive Sinead Boucher said.
Done was an example of the publisher’s commitment to find new ways to fund journalism in New Zealand by partnering with industry experts and leveraging the marketing strength Fairfax’s audience brings, Boucher said.
“We think offering comprehensive and cost effective health insurance is another way we can service our monthly audience of 3.4 million New Zealanders.””
Service?
yeah, right.
Interestingly enough, people with private insurance use more public health resources than those without private insurance. Therefore, private insurers should pay a premium to the government for the extra burden they place on the public health system.
…you make a very interesting point there mpledger.
A mate used to work as a health care assistant in the operating theatre of a busy public hospital.
The number of patients coming into theatre from the private hospital over the road was quite significant.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/29/pfi-crippling-nhs
“Second, we can still afford to pay for universal healthcare – but only if we stop using NHS funds to prop up banks and equity investors.”
So will the (private) market be more efficient?…..the evidence is clear, less reach and inflated cost…but great returns!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita
Stick your PPP’s where the sun dont shine.
I think this man says it all pity he never became PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX-P4mx1FLU
on the strength of that brief encounter i’m inclined to agree….could Jacinda Adern become a contemporary kiwi version?
Phillip Bagshaw…on why (NZ) doctors need to speak out.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/2018623967/philip-bagshaw-why-doctors-need-to-speak-out
“Things were going pretty well until the 1990s for us, and at that stage neoliberalism really was the order of the day with managerialism in medicine.
“Medicine took a terrible hit, everybody knew that at the time, but very few people did, publically at least, anything about it. They may have complained behind closed doors, they certainly didn’t come out in the media and complain.”
When the age of austerity started to bite in the 1990s, Bagshaw and some of his colleagues openly questioned the philosophy and its consequences.
“We wrote a book called The Patients Are Dying, which chronicled the deaths and problems occurring at Christchurch Hospital, and some of us were threatened with unemployment and all sorts of other things.”
Bagshaw says he tried to voice his concerns through traditional professional channels.
“All of which I found didn’t help. It was just not possible to change things. Whilst you can think globally, you must act locally in order to make change.”
The following extract is from the editorial in the British Medical Journal. You can see how the Herald has screwed the content to get its own anti-commie, red under the bedders, like James, all excited.
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)32805-2/fulltext
Pooling of resources to achieve a common purpose is not inherently bad, James. It is what you would expect from most groups of animals.
Jonathon Coleman used the Commie angle in Question Time yesterday. What a ratbag.
Coleman has blood on his hands by screwing down public health and causing the deaths of so many he should be tarred and feathered.
That list of values:
The free self-determination of the individual, an equitable society, the end of exploitation, deepening possibilities for public participation in shaping collective choices, refusing to accept the fixity of human nature and believing in our capacity to change, and keeping a sense of the interdependence and indivisibility of our common humanity.
Everything after that first one fills right-wingers with fear and loathing. I’m not surprised the Herald editor shat his pants.
Vogue-Gate is just another silly sideshow propagated by those who want us to avoid the real news at any cost.
This is news we should be paying attention to: Gender ‘pinkwashing’ at WTO bodes ill for trade agenda – Kelsey
James wants to avoid the real news.
The Lancet, a British medical journal, not THE British Medical Journal.
If you can’t even get the basic citation right, how perfunctory was the rest of your reading?
A small but (indeed) important difference.
But the rest of the point remains.
Oh yes. The latest Meme is Jacinda is a communist. LOL.
She is a socialist lite if anything.
Reds under the bed, all Hanna Barbera again!! Wonder who is paying now for the dancing cossacks?
Meanwhile the reforms keep coming. Not quickly enough for some, but great 50 days in.
A not so subtle comment aimed at Jacinda from our Australian friends.
I guess she missed the diplomacy part of the job induction.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11958367
Sledging is something that the Australians are good at.
James believes what the Herald writes………
Point out something inaccurate in the link I posted ?
I prefer to discuss issues James.
History proves that not to be a fact.
But let’s discuss what’s wrong with believing that article linked to in the herald?
Do you not believe it?
Do you have anything to back up your reasoning ?
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-13-12-2017/#comment-1425565
James, you are the inaccuracy in the link you posted.
So I take it you folk cannot find anything inaccurate in the link – and have to resort to little insults to deflect from the issue.
Jacinda is a walking trainwreck with Australia.
What is your view on our levels of inequality?
What are the solutions?
This is called a serious political issue, James.
Are you able to discuss this?
http://www.inequality.org.nz/understand/
http://www.closingthegap.org.nz/
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2017/01/revealed-new-zealand-s-growing-wealth-gap-fracturing-society.html
James, I think it’s interesting that Barnaby Joyce is (in the article you so helpfully linked to) demonstrating exactly the behaviour he is so helpfully warning Jacinda Ardern against:
1) Interfering in another country’s domestic affairs (how is it his business if we offer to take refugees that his country has refused?);
2) Using the media to talk to another government, rather than contacting them directly. He says, “And if you are going to talk to them at all, talk to them quietly and discreetly, off the record, not via telephone, not via TV.” (and note that Ardern DID speak to Turnball directly whereas Joyce is using Newstalk ZB, as relayed by The Herald).
Oh, the irony!
James clearly approves of some of the most racist policies in the world towards refugees.
No wonder. His Breitbart friends told him to think like that.
This is what James supports.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1ZIXbh_Kg0
5.11121 James, Sutton is not all Australia. Most Aussies think Jacinda is great, especially when compared with the views held by Turnbull and Abbot.
“Most Aussies” really?
Hardly – though the last men standing as the Turnbull government shambles its way towards the dustbin of history are desperately looking for anyone else to blame.
Point out something inaccurate in the link I posted ?
Oh, there’s nothing inaccurate in there – it makes a pretty clear case that Australia is currently run by the most appalling shits and Ardern needs to take seriously the threat that said appalling shits pose to NZ. It’s just not clear how you come to see it as some kind of indictment of Ardern.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it agian: every year NZ should find the two biggest jerks in the Australian government, and grant them a one-year-only, unrenouncable citizenship to NZ.
Kepp your friends close, make your enemies citizens 🙂
Dutton definitely needs an urgent grant of NZ citizenship. The one-year-only thing is also a good idea, as there’d be a significant risk of him being deported here for poor character.
And notice James uses the NZ Herald as his stable for “truth” ha ha that is a frigging joke the NZ herald has been likened to “The Daily Fail”
So we should call james paper as the “NZ Herald – Mail Fail”
An application to remove 18 million litres of water a day from a small Bay of Plenty town and send it offshore has been rejected by the Bay of Plenty Regional Council.
NZ Aquifer managing director Roydon Hartnett, who is representing the two companies, said the council advised it of a “very minor administrative change” where they asked it to separate the extraction and drilling activities. The company would change it before resubmitting the application this week.
Hartnett said this would slightly delay plans as they had been expecting a decision this year.
“We are now hopeful of hearing positive news from the regional council by mid-January.”
Hartnett was behind the two previous attempts at setting up water bottling plants in South Waikato and Ashburton.
The latest proposal is more ambitious than his previous attempts as it wants to take almost three times the amount of water Hartnett’s company Blue Spring Limited proposed extracting from Putaruru’s Blue Spring in the Waihou River.
NZ Pure Blue Springs Ltd withdrew its application in October after Raukawa Iwi refused to support it because of the significant adverse affects to the spring.
http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/national/director-of-water-bottling-plant-has-yet-another-attempt/
Pure Blue overseas-owned
The company behind a proposal to drain millions of litres of water a day from a popular spring to sell overseas has revealed it is only 39 per cent New Zealand-owned.
NZ Pure Blue, also known as NZ Pure Blue Springs Limited, has lodged a resource consent application to drain 6.9 million litres form the Putaruru Blue Spring in the Waikato to bottle locally and offshore.
A source informed the NZ Herald that the company told members of the local iwi, the Raukawa Settlement Trust, at a meeting in Tokoroa on Monday night that 61 per cent of the company was owned by overseas investors including 10 per cent Australian and some Chinese.
Thanks for this Ed,
The water bandits are still coming are they?
They are taking water from the ground water or out of “deep well ejection?
If they take water from the deep aquifer areas and leave the shallow aquifer water for municipal authorities because the water quality is so bad that it will be rejected by overseas experts seeking ‘pristine water’ so there is where these “water bandits” are doing now.
We must have them all rejected from our country as also the water is sent by trucks over our roads to ports ruining our roads and residential areas near roads they transport our prinstine water.
So we are being screwed all directions by these “water bandits” and paying to fix the roads they are wrecking too????.
Are we stupid to allow this?
Attn Penny Bright.Watching a recent video about Key,I saw when you challenged him at a public meeting in Papatoetoe about your O.I.A request regarding,exactly who NZ has borrowed billions off.
He was his usual evasive self,but did you ever find out?
Funny that.
James never seems to want to debate the issue of inequality in New Zealand.
He goes silent or moves to another thread with another smear.
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-13-12-2017/#comment-1425579
Sometimes I just cannot be bothered with people that type hysterical shit like you do.
other times – I’m busy with one of the businesses and have better things to do.
Other times I’m too busy laughing at you.
James is happy with the inequality as are most RWNJs. They think it’s normal rather than the sociopathy that it is.
James loves misery that shows clearly now.
Misery is his second name.
He is now deeply affected by the every day appearance of labour policies being rollled out and is freaking out about it all.
Get over it as we have had a gut full of your constant wining.
My middle name is George.
I know speculation is against the policy, but James Misery George desperately need an appropriately double-barrelled surname.
The Herald thinks Jacinda Ardern is a Marxist.
Surely a misnomer.
James finds poverty a laughing matter.
Like Paula Bennett.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdFOhwo48IY
You seem to have a high opinion of your ability to know my thoughts on matters.
If you want to state my view on a topic – then link to something I have said that supports it.
Linking to something different and then stating that it is my view is dishonest at best, unhinged at worst.
And is simple (and not very effective) trolling.
Please come out and tell us your view on inequality in NZ.
Would love to hear it.
No point asking Ed, he wont come clean, as he loves misery.
I must admit – it is clear that a few of you lead miserable lives.
When Obama was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, we never heard the end of it. Maybe that farce explains the silence when such an award is won by someone who actually deserves it….
https://www.rt.com/uk/412667-corbyn-chomsky-peace-prize-geneva/
Jeremy Corbyn will lose the next election in the UK and the Tories will win.
The Tories cannot be doing any worse than they are at present: each and every minister and PM May screw up at every opportunity.
Yet Corbyn is behind in the polls,
“Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour messiah for the many not the few, who still manages to straddle both sides of the Brexit fence.
Amid that fiasco, the concealment of impact studies, accelerating inflation and stagnant wages, his party should be streaking ahead. The latest YouGov poll puts the Tories in front by a point.”
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/kathy-sheridan-city-of-culture-farce-pretty-much-sums-up-brexit-1.3324608
Arctic climate ‘report card’ reveals ‘rapid and dramatic changes’ to the polar environment.
‘The devastating impact of climate change in the polar regions has been confirmed by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) annual Arctic Report Card
Authors from the American scientific agency concluded that 2017 was not a record-breaking year in terms of climate extremes, there was still evidence that the Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the global average.
The widespread environmental changes that arise as a result of this warming are beginning to define “an emerging new normal” in the region, the report said.’
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/arctic-climate-change-report-sea-temperature-rise-melting-ice-caps-polar-environment-global-warming-a8106161.html
Climate scientists response
Eric Holthaus
‘Reading this, I feel physically sick. I feel so anxious. I’m not sure how many more years or months I’m going to be able to work daily on climate change. Today is one of those days.’
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFzEZaazTe0
More blackmail from Team New Zealand.
I’m going to pick up my toys and go home.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2017/12/12/67845/superyachts-in-the-balance-in-auckland-cup-call
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0RHyPPXCoQ
Is the most obnoxious MP around?
Hearing this comfortably off woman and her faux concern for the poor makes me feel sick.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/09/16/wow-how-much-does-louise-upston-hate-women-why-sacking-the-minister-for-women-shouldnt-be-the-only-minister-to-go/
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11440715
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/heavily-criticised-louise-upston-loses-womens-affairs-portfolio-new-minister-paula-bennett
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11768159
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckfUILnsc20
If the speaker ruled that ad hominem arguments are unparliamentary, the National Party would have a serious problem.
Ed
Any excuse to play the Messiah is welcome. And that about the houses is one of the better excuses.
Well that disappeared so I’ll put it up as it’s a great bit of Christmas music.
Nice presentation by great choir with young boy sopranos at Kings College, Cambridge and they are really throwing themselves into it with verve.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NNy289k6Oc
I will be unpopular but will give the Portsmouth Sinfonia’s version an airing.
There is a lot of goodwill going into performing this music, and by the audience. A lot of the choir turned up at the Albert Hall on the day and swelled the numbers.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkPGByh_F50
Yes a lot of my elderly clients are spending Christmas by them selves I talk to them about it. That is the reason I will have a plan to have a culture that will encourage vist from our children an mokos. Many thanks to all my viewers for giving ECO the Mana to advocate for Lady’s equality human rights an OUR environmental sustainability for our World. Many thanks to all the people who have got my back at home in NZ you show that the good logical Kiwi people are still prevalent in OUR beautiful country. Most of our international stars display these qualities. Ka pai
Many thanks to to all the good information and guidance my fellow bloggers post here on the standard I have a couple of Yodas the first star Wars movie was released when I was 8 Im a Sci fi fan just to busy to watch last time I went to the cinema I fell asleep in 10 minutes my wife was not happy lol.
Kai kaha
Have a good Christmas eco maori, hope you can get a dvd Christmas special or borrow some and then you can fall asleep in front of as many movies as you feel like.
I suppose everyone has seen this nasty sour, threatening little piece from the man with the nasty, sour face – Barnaby Joyce. Thank goodness he has broken his ties with this country. Australia is the place for him for sure.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/13/barnaby-joyce-says-new-zealand-should-back-off-on-offer-to-resettle-refugees
There is something about that name Joyce that is seeming to be aggressive as our “Steven Joyce” is another one like “nasty sour, threatening little piece from the man with the nasty, sour face – Barnaby Joyce”
While looking for something entirely different I found a film called Barnaby Jones.
It must have been in his Mum and Dad’s mind when they named Ozzie Barnaby Joyce.
The blurb about it :
‘Barnaby Jones (TV Series 1973–1980) – IMDb
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069557/
Crime · The exploits of milk-swilling, geriatric private eye Barnaby Jones. ..’
Milk-swilling and geriatric. Sounds like a lot more laughs than Ozzie Joyce.
cleangreen
Related? How many in politics have connections with others in leading roles, or previous politicians? Family lines, professionals beget the same, tradies the same? Roger Douglas and Bill Anderton are a pair with a family connection for instance.
And able to look out for each other. Bill English has brothers in positions of authority.