Albert Einstein said we can’t solve problems with the same thinking or consciousness that created them. From my perspective, indigenous world-views, values and frameworks provide the thinking we need to solve some of the most pressing issues of our time. Also, the outcomes in New Zealand are so crappy for Māori, that if we get it right for tāngata whenua, it’ll work for everyone.
I am really proud that both ActionStation and RockEnrol pay people way more than a Living Wage to do paid purposeful work. I love creating pathways to meaningful employment. I also love seeing how many young people are standing for local government this year. I like to think that RockEnrol’s work (alongside folks like Chlöe Swarbrick and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) helped inspire that.
Petty messenger attacking again. Ironic particularly for Anne.
If I made things up like this about a regular here I suspect I'd be hammered for it.
And wrong. I was up at 5:30 researching for a house painting project I'm working on. Made. Watched Deep Blue with my granddaughter who is staying, then made a cuppa for everyone.
Complainants want the Labour Party to address it's archaic power structure, and hope that Jacinda Ardern can make it happen.
Alison Mau:
And while the party rows about how it's going to achieve next steps, the young people are laser-focussed on what needs to happen now. I asked one of them what it was they wanted, now that they really do have everyone's attention.
The group wants policy change at the top of course, with a complete overhaul of the sexual harm prevention and handling policy. It wants sensitive complaints referred to an expert third party for investigation.
And it wants the party to stop relying on its own supposed expertise, and take note of what the real experts have to say about the prevention of sexual harassment and bullying.
The group is now pinning its hopes on Jacinda Ardern.
They do not yet know when they will meet with her, and some of them are a little overwhelmed at the very thought, but they are refusing to condemn her, and they have a very clear idea of what they'd like to say when they do.
"We will go through our stories with her in more detail," one of the group told me.
"We would want an open, honest and frank conversation about what it's like to be a young recruit to Labour in 2019.
"We would tell her how hard we have pushed progressive parts of the party on subjects like abortion law reform – (that) we are not just bitter volunteers, we really care about this stuff.
"(We will tell her) here are some conditions that the party needs to look at, before any of us feel comfortable coming back into these (Labour) spaces."
Those conditions include requiring all staff to undergo sexual harassment prevention and disclosure handling training. They'd like to see a code of conduct being developed for party volunteers, rolled out party-wide.
They would like the party to finally understand the power imbalances in Labour: "we are not only male dominated, but incredibly white."
The young woman says she remains a Labour member and "has hope" because she's seen the party change and adapt before but it will have to address an "archaic" power structure.
I think that Ardern will understand that there's lot riding on this – for the victims of course, but also for the reputation of the Labour Party and it's attractiveness to young people, especially to young females.
Labour has talked about gender balance for years, but has failed to provide a safe environment for young people, especially females.
Note the names of those who seem to have been responsible for male staffer protection debacle – Nigel, Grant, Andrew, Rob.
And there's a lot riding on this for Jacinda herself. Her reputation, her primary attractiveness as a new generation leader who is a caring and empathetic champion of gender balance and rights, is on the line.
She needs to make sure the repair job from here is done transparently. If the inquiry terms of reference are stacked in favour of the party and the Council, if the report is kept secret like the last one, if there is a lack of openness and no public sign of real repair and progress, then Ardern have failed to live up to her PR, again.
"(We will tell her) here are some conditions that the party needs to look at, before any of us feel comfortable coming back into these (Labour) spaces."
That cannot be done in secret, because it is not just the group of victims who want change, it's the future of the party at stake. Prospective party recruits – volunteers and candidates – need to know that Labour has finally learnt from multiple failures and put things right.
It has been claimed (and not denied) that he was closely associated with the (now ex) staffer, and was aware of the seriousness of allegations and, if we are to believe Ardern, kept important information from her as did the other men named above.
Sorry, next time I will paste your words into my reply to make sure I read them more carefully. Could have sworn it said ‘the names of those staffers’.
"It has been claimed (and not denied)", and "if we are to believe" appear to be attempts to convince that any scurrilous accusation put forward without evidence must be given as much credence as supported facts. We have heard a lot of conjecture, and undoubtledly some fact, but separating the two has not been easy, or I suggest for most people possible. What started out as a complaint of office bullying seems to have developed into harrassment, sexual misconduct, and now serious sexual abuse. We don't know whether this is by a single individual to another individual, or by more than one of either culprit or victim. We generally trust our media, but we do not know what they have heard themselves or been told by others. I trust some of the media who have reported enough to believe that there has been some matters that needed and still need addressing. if we are talking about an employment matter it is not clear who that employer is – the Labour Party appears to have been involved but not Parliamentary Services. If there are criminal matters it is not clear why the victim(s) has or have not been prepared to report a crime to the police, or whether threats or inducements have discouraged police involvement. Now I have enough trust in our media to believe that they do not get everything wrong; I believe there has been at least one incident that either should not have happened and/or should have been dealt with differently. In the meantime the question of who knew what when is a sideshow, but a recent further article in the SpinOff does at least indicate that one journalist is convinced that Jacinda Ardern did not know of the extent of the complaints until last Monday.
If you know more, Pete, then by all means post the information with the evidence – provides that does not impede a possible criminal investigation of course), but if you do not have impeccable evidence, perhaps it is better to wait rather than to assume that every "claim" is automatically credible.
Ardern's halo effect has blinded many of Labour's supporters to the party's appalling failings in its handling of the whole sorry, sad mess. Some still don't get it. But pony tails, they protest. But Jami-Lee Ross.
But just contrast the last few weeks to former Prime Minister John Keys' swift removal of Richard Worth from both Cabinet and subsequently Parliament after a serious sexual allegation.
…
Helen Clark was the same, a legendary micro-manager, the iron fist in an iron glove.
…
So what now?
No leader likes loose ends and there are plenty of those as Ardern prepares to head overseas this week. So expect her to announce further action before she steps on a plane. But it will have to be more than token – Ardern has to be clear that urgent, and painful, culture change is needed in the organisation she leads.
Many of the party faithful will find it had to swallow that Labour has failed to walk the talk on an issue so core to its – and Ardern's -identity.
But the only place where they should be pointing the finger is at themselves.
[Added the correct punctuation in the quoted text; you wouldn’t want to create an impression that you might be quoting selectively, would you? Pete, you should know and do better. Next time, I’ll delete the text and only leave the link. In fact, I getting itchy fingers when I see large texts being copied & pasted here – Incognito]
[Pete should know better as he had a three week ban for the same thing in 2017. Perhaps he forgot, but I think another ban now will help him cement this in his mind. He’s also been moderated more than once in various ways over not linking.
Pete, you’re a really long term commenter, you know the deal: always link, don’t misquote, and try to avoid long tracts of cut and pastes. Looking at your comments to Sacha you appear to not understand the problem here. When you cut and past different pieces of an article you have to make it clear that they are not one block of text. If you still don’t get this, ask one of the moderators for clarification when you get back.
3 weeks again, given it’s been a long time, but expect bans to get longer for repeat offenses. Interim ban, as I’ll run this past the mods already active in this thread – weka]
[ban reduced to a week. Pete the key point here about quoting is that if you post separate sections of someone else’s work, you have to make it clear you have removed bits. This is quite different than what Sacha did, which was to post part of an article, but with no bits cut out of the part he quoted – weka]
The outcome must be that NZ faces itself in the "mirror". I'm a bit perplexed, and the use of the words men & women is solely to make a point that has occurred to me. In various comments and positions on this on an emotive level, and not necessarily based on facts that anyone can confirm, some of those now most concerned with the victims have not displayed that concern previously and appear to be purely political. Has it it been decided from an editorial perspective that having mainly "women" journalists, it appears to me anyway carry the message these or any offences are Labour's "fault". I hope not because the story, the facts and where that leads NZ is all I want to hear.
Labour has been at fault here. Not once but twice, badly, with multiple victims in both.
But it is symptomatic of whole of New Zealand society problems. The National Party has had it's own embarrassing problems, publicly as recently as last year.
Law firms have been in the spotlight.
It is generally and strongly agreed that our judicial system has is not fit for purpose, overall and particularly related to sex offences (and probably violence offences which are often connected).
Abuse of power is a common factor.
The law business community has tried to fix it's problems.
National say they have addressed their handling of bullying and sexual matters in the wake of the Jami-Lee Ross affairs. There's no way of the public knowing if that has been effective.
A review of the judicial system is currently under way.
And Labour re running their own inquiry into their mishandling of things.
Was the Beehive involved in a cover-up of the allegations that have rocked Labour?
It's likely we'll never know.
The party's investigations so far have been so ham-fisted and inept, it's hard to have any confidence in the latest process.
Barrister Maria Dew was hired by the party to re-investigate multiple allegations against a Labour parliamentary staffer.
But, the investigation is only looking at the allegations against the Labour staffer, not how the party bureaucracy handled complaints.
Labour's Council will sign off on the terms of reference for the Dew Review. Its 20-plus members bear responsibility for how the young complainants were failed – and it's new acting president was on the panel that dismissed complaints. It's no surprise they want to avoid scrutiny of their decisions. But it's hardly an independent process.
With this narrow focus on the complaints, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, her staff, ministers and MPs also escape a dissection of their role. Ardern's answers – beyond saying she was assured the allegations weren't serious – have been unsatisfactory and thin.
It's highly unlikely Dew's report would ever be made public anyway. The party refused to release the findings of lawyer Maria Austen (formerly Berryman) who was asked to look into Labour's handling of sexual assault claims made at a summer youth camp.
Media will be scrutinising how Labour handles this.
While it is a whole society problem a lot depends on how Labour handles this.
For a start, it could be a major factor in determining who our next Government is led by.
But it's bigger than that. If the Prime Minister and the major governing party openly deal with this well it will (finally) set a good example from the top that society needs to reform how it views and deals with bullying. violence, sexual violence and abuse of power.
If Labour sweep this under the carpet again then (some of) society will see this as a signal that sweeping under the carpet and business as usual (abuse as usual) is still normal practice.
Look, other than those who abuse and those who will use any part of this for political gain I can not think anyone who would want anything other than this "(finally) set a good example", can you?
…the first of Labour's issues (summer camp attacks) involved illegal behaviour that went to court.
It involved illegal behaviour of the kind that happens at parties in this country every weekend and doesn't usually end up in court because the media aren't interested and there's no political propaganda to be had from it. The perps in those cases are usually either not dealt with, or dealt with via public shaming or violence rather than complaints to the Police.
The fact that some men behave like that when drunk is a rape culture issue, not a Labour Party issue, and the prurient interest in this particular instance is mostly either politically motivated or just hand-wringing from conservatives who've led sheltered lives. Or both, I suspect, in your case.
Reflect on the rugby player in an airport toilet situation a couple of years back. Not the 'incident', the media handling of it and the explosion of public hysteria that generated.
The media love a good feeding frenzy and generating one is good for business, and egos. Couple that with the team at newstalkzb and the likes of Matthew Hooton quite simply wanting Labour and Jacinda Arden gone, the scenario is perfect.
Thank you, as a mother and a grandmother I have kept my opinion on that incident largely to myself as I knew it would not be popular to say what I thought and how I would use such examples. In an effort to keep them all safe "boys & girls" pointing out that things may not turn out always as you hope was a mainstay. That's not about blame it is about people, young people who as you say across the country can end up making utter fools of themselves when alcohol is at hand and even when it's not. That is part of the lesson the young need to learn hopefully sooner rather than later and even more so on the roads and in cars!
Granted there is a rape culture issue with drunken youth but this was a Labour Camp for under 16's where there was lotsa booze available and it was sanctioned by Labour. Not too many of us would allow or have a cabinet of (free?) booze at our children's 16th birthdays and not too many parents would approve of their children attending any teenage function where liquor was freely available to them. I think the party has to own this.
My parents sure as hell wouldn't have approved of the drinking I was doing at ages 15 – 17, but on the plus side, what they didn't know didn't hurt them. All this hand-wringing about Labour failing to prevent alcohol sullying the sacred temple of teenagers' bodies makes Doug Sellman look like a bad-ass.
Are you sure it was a camp "for" under 16s or a youth camp that incl that group and above, I very much doubt there were 13-15s there but you can correct me with some facts.
So much of the Jamie Lee Ross superbly mismanaged debacle was hidden. There's a lot there we need to know. Pompous Paula was right out of line divulging private information on public television which started Jamie's downward mental spiral.
Also what happened to that poor ' mistreated' woman Sarah Cowie who also in a drunken rage of rejection also contributed to his ultimate step of thinking of ending his life.
NOTHING! She's still in her very responsible role in the NationalParty. So what she did was acceptable to them?? Some double standards in there somewhere.
And petulant,perfidious Paula preaching from her pulpit of presumed power should take a look in her own back yard before trying to topple Jacinda with rabid rhetoric. I'm sure there is any amount of weed there that needs to be exposed. For the good of the country of course. Paula is fuelled by hatred for Jacind a.
Compared it how, exactly? Key's "prompt action" was very good for him and the National Party but did nothing for Worth's victims, nothing to improve public awareness of rape culture and how to respond to it, and nothing for openness and transparency in government. The fact that you compare Key favourably with Ardern in that case suggests you're thinking of this entirely in terms of how cleverly some players are playing a game.
Yes, prompt action is the only way – if only the people who were complained to had had the nous to realise that. And Key had never promised the most open and transparent Govt. ever.
In that particular case, it was the best way to minimise political damage to brand Key and the National Party. Whether it was also a good thing for the victims or not we'll never know, but my money's on them not getting even a second thought.
And Key had never promised the most open and transparent Govt. ever.
I don't recall Ardern promising that either.
It's commendably honest of right-wingers to admit that they just assume a National government's going to act in its own interests and conceal that from voters, but unfortunately (and I get sick of having to point this out), National itself is not so honest:
And the second has allegations of serious offences that many think should have gone to court.
It may or may not go to court. What manythink is irrelevant to the due process except for putting undue pressure on those who could make it happen.
There's also the problem that Ardern was seen as a champion of young people and of women's rights, and is seen to have failed on both. [my emphasis]
Public perception and opinion is influenced if not manipulated to a large degree by the media. To me, you come across as a media accomplice not as a truth seeker. I prefer the latter and these people differentiate themselves from the main crowd not be being more intelligent, more confident, or being louder (e.g. boasting and bragging) but by nuance, humility, sophisticated and critical thinking, and generally admitting that they know shit nothing in the first place.
It’s highly unlikely Dew’s report would ever be made public anyway.
Ummm. Have you ever actually read a report of this kind? I have.
It is full of material that was given under confidentiality, is full of inadmissible hearsay, people names, and is deeply prejudicial to any subsequent court processes.
Releasing it may be appreciated to the prurient dribblers slavering over the underwear details. However it doesn’t help anyone apart from journalists after column inches and airtime.
Perhaps you and the idiot who wrote that quoted piece should engage your brain rather than your lust for gossip and consider what options gets killed if that kind of report gets released. For a start, just think of the consequences for victims.
He's like a dog with an old bone. Can't leave it alone. Either that or he is trolling in which case it might be necessary for a moderator to intervene. It's been going on for nearly a week.
So you're trying to influence moderators to shut things down?
This has been the biggest story in political media all week. Given how important it is to Labour, I would have thought it would be of interest to discussions here – unless the intent is to aid the apparent Labour Party coverups, which looks increasingly what some are trying to do.
[lprent: You must be blind. There have been comments all over the site for days. Unlike you, some of them have actually had suggestions about what should be done to prevent this kind of crap again.
I realise that you prefer to act as a brainless critic who carps and can’t offer any ideas. But perhaps you should try exercising your brain a bit.
But my toleration for outright lying by you and other is wearing very thin. If you can’t bring yourself to actually participate in debate about how to solve a problem – then leave. ]
No, I'm under the impression that people here have been trying to avoid discussing an issue that is important not just to Labour but to the Government and the country.
And I don't care what sources you may read, I'm not doing it for you.
You could ignore things here that you've already read rather than join the petty pile-on.
I'm under the impression that people here have been trying to avoid discussing an issue that is important not just to Labour but to the Government and the country.
The lengthy threads of people discussing it gave you that impression, did they? I dread to think what you imagine not avoiding discussing it would like.
I haven’t noticed that Pete George has managed to suggest anything constructive on this topic. He still appears to be coming up to speed with his own lack of knowledge on the issues.
In fact his most recent post quotes some actual sensible advice from Young Labour via Alison Mau that appears to have been written here. That essentially says that the Labour Party shouldn’t try to rely on internal expertise to handle these kinds of issues, but should get outside expertise.
Reading PG, it is hard to see that he managed to grasp the point. That the core problem is that Labour simply doesn’t have in-house expertise and shouldn’t be trying to do their own investigations.
They’re saying a QC – but fundamentally that is way too expensive to do every time that someone raises these kinds of issues.
To be frank it’d be simpler to disband Young Labour so the Labour Party can get on with what we pay levies for. Just about every dumbarse political crap of this kind has arisen out Young Labour or the barely grown dickheads having access to them (think Darren Hughes).
Or perhaps the answer go the other way give and give the Labour Party the authority to launch criminal prosecutions. There are some National MPs and ex ones that I would be interested in seeing in court explaining their behaviour….
Perhaps Pete should try to contribute his actual ideas rather than stroking his outrage
To be frank it’d be simpler to disband Young Labour so the Labour Party can get on with what we pay levies for. Just about every dumbarse political crap of this kind has arisen out of Young Labour or the barely grown dickheads having access to them (think Darren Hughes).
Couldn't agree more!
In my day we young things worked through the main party. We learned from our elders how to behave in a political environment and they gave us the benefit of their knowledge and expertise, so that we were well informed and could avoid the ever present pit-falls of political life. Most of all we learnt how to socialise with all age groups and to show respect for the elderly who knew a darn sight more about life than we did.
I am opposed to lowering the voting age precisely for the type of behaviour we have seen in recent times and which has become all too prevalent among so many young people in this country.
The people who caused a problem were not Young Labour this time. Two people with vast experience made bad decisions, which has made things harder for the complainants and definitely harder for the PM.
She went to the heart of it.
1. What the complainants needed to happen
2. An independent 3rd party to look at actions and facts.
3. The PM to be kept in the loop.
Out of all of that….
4. To change Labour's culture in this sphere to make the Party spaces safer in the future.
I disagree about disbanding Young Labour. A Youth wing is essentially the school/club rugby of a political party – people build skills, connections and interests, and also do a lot of the ground work for local actions.
But all youth groups need to be properly supervised, otherwise harmful cultures can build up (especially around alcohol).
But this staffer thing has nothing really to do with Young Labour beyond an incidental connection and that it shows Labour didn't learn a damned thing about how to deal with sensitive complaints in an informal environment.
So – what about the children? Labour can'yt disassociate itself from pastoral care for its voters and its young adherents in Young Labour as well. Get back to some good old fashioned interest and leadership for the young where it isn't all about money and immediate power and advantage.
I was thinking more "have a rotating watch of authority figures who intervene to stop people getting too drunk", sort of thing.
What the YL incident and the student law society camp complaints in the last few years had in common was that most things being complained about happened after the adults/authority figures left/went to bed.
Then there's the issue of how to resolve complaints after they occur.
Prevention, and if prevention fails go to treatment.
I see that. So Sacha can selectively quote, then complain about me selectively quoting, and you choose to dump on me? (I know it's your call).
[Don’t be so melodramatic! You know how things work here and you have been warned before about your incessant pasting & linking here. It is in the Policy:
Similarly pasting long materials from other sites, especially copyrighted materials, is not permitted. Just link and selectively quote. Repeated offences is really dumb.
I’m not impressed with you playing dumb and/or tit-for-tat games with Sacha.
Your hypersensitivity to criticism is showing. I did not “dump” on you; I warned you through a moderation note, and the correct term for that is “moderate”. Please note that you have been wasting moderators’ time [plural] and if you keep this up you will be ‘dumped’ (you and I know it’s your call) – Incognito]
[Edit: I just saw that Weka has already taken action that is more decisive; I’m just fudge]
Pete is lucky I didn't see the dumping comment until after I had moderated. I agree the ball is in his court now (there's a note in the back end about the length of the ban).
Pete, please show it when you leave out chunks of an article as you have done here in at least two separate posts today. I understand you are simplifying but wrapping quotes around the whole passage misrepresents the original source.
Posting such large parts of each article may also discourage readers here from bothering to click through to the original. Took me a second coffee.
Those conditions include requiring all staff to undergo sexual harassment prevention and disclosure handling training. They’d like to see a code of conduct being developed for party volunteers, rolled out party-wide.
The staff of the Labour party are about 20-30 people all up. I believe that most if not all have had this training. Certainly we don’t appear to have received any complaints from them about their behaviour.
Where they have arisen to date they have come from (in no particular order) volunteers, MPs, parliamentary staff, and random idiots who apparently weren’t even members and just turned up.
Certainly the party needs to craft a policy on it. That should be farmed out to someone with actual expertise in dealing with workplace bullying and sexual assaults. Their primary role shouldn’t be to investigate. It should be to support and shepard the complaints to the appropriate authorities so that they get dealt with.
Great article which pretty much sums up my feelings towards this and many other issues. For all the platitudes and tokenism their isn't actually the political and social will to make the changes necessary to prevent this impending doom. There will be one day when we are on the precipice of the apocalypse. But when that day arrives, a hollow feeling will swell in those peoples stomachs when they finally realize that they can now do nothing, their time has come and gone, and any grand scheme to prevent our destructions time was 20 to 50 years ago. As I said last week, I have taken steps to ensure my hopeful survival and adapt as best as I can. Will it work? Probably not, but at least I'm giving it my best effort. If only our leaders and people in influence would do the same.
There will be one day when we are on the precipice of the apocalypse. But when that day arrives, a hollow feeling will swell in those peoples stomachs when they finally realize that they can now do nothing,
Has that day arrived? There is significant evidence that the ssw event has forced a catastrophic (bifurcation ) reversal in the antarctic atmosphere.ie near reversal of the polar vortex,decreased ozone loss (and breakup of the ozone hole)
The increased probability for a wetter,colder and windier spring,summer in NZ with decreased mean T.Is that good for NZ?
The problem with Franzen article,is that he cited a paper where he invoked catastrophe (which did not exist)
According to a recent paper in Nature, the carbon emissions from existing global infrastructure, if operated through its normal lifetime, will exceed our entire emissions “allowance”—the further gigatons of carbon that can be released without crossing the threshold of catastrophe.
cant access the graph you have in your link but ask the question…do you accept the rational behind the IPCC's target of staying below a 2 deg C increase?
My opinion is to read what the science is suggesting.Not what various purveyors of crisis are suggesting.
The emergent scientific consensus is the IPCC science irrationally.Not by sceptics but alarmists and it has no place in science analysis.
the wmo sg statement here.
In my interview, I made clear that a science-based approach underpins climate action, and that our best science shows that the climate is changing, driven in large part by human action. However, I pointed out that the science-based approach is undermined when facts are taken out of context to justify extreme measures in the name of climate action.
so thats a negative….well i do accept the IPCC rationale advocating 2 deg C as a likely tipping point to unrecoverable climate change that is outside our habitability…maybe a little less or more…and on that basis the statement that if the existing infrastructure burns FF forhe estimated lifespan of that infrastructure we will well exceed the carbon budget for 2 deg C is obviously right…so the statement in the article is accurate
I said read what the science says (not what you think i said)
2c is not a tipping point .That s your unscientific opinion of a mathematical statement ie it has a strict description (including grammar) no more no less,and of which your understanding would be say limited.
2 deg C (above pre industrial average) has been determined as a point where unrecoverable climate feedbacks will (with a high degree of probability) be triggered…with your superior understanding of scientific principle do you wish to dispute that is the position of the IPCC?
A tipping point is a bifurcation.back to back saddle node,and or Shilnikov in the case of the ENSO complex system with regime change due to negative feedbacks
Large amplitude response to feedbacks appear only in linear systems and have significant constraints on prediction of complex systems. eg Zalipin and Ghil.
We revisit a recent claim that the Earth’s climate system is characterized by sensitive dependence to parameters; in particular, that the system exhibits an asymmetric,large-amplitude response to normally distributed feedback forcing. Such a response would imply irreducible uncertainty in climate change predictions and thus have notable implications for climate science and climate-related policy making. We show that equilibrium climate sensitivity in all generality does not support such an intrinsic indeterminacy; the latter appears only in essentially linear systems.The main flaw in the analysis that led to this claim is in-appropriate linearization of an intrinsically nonlinear model;there is no room for physical interpretations or policy conclusions based on this mathematical error.
"To judge from recent opinion polls, which show that a majority of Americans (many of them Republican) are pessimistic about the planet’s future, and from the success of a book like David Wallace-Wells’s harrowing “The Uninhabitable Earth,” which was released this year, I’m not alone in having reached this conclusion. But there continues to be a reluctance to broadcast it. Some climate activists argue that if we publicly admit that the problem can’t be solved, it will discourage people from taking any ameliorative action at all. This seems to me not only a patronizing calculation but an ineffectual one, given how little progress we have to show for it to date. The activists who make it remind me of the religious leaders who fear that, without the promise of eternal salvation, people won’t bother to behave well. In my experience, nonbelievers are no less loving of their neighbors than believers. And so I wonder what might happen if, instead of denying reality, we told ourselves the truth."
I have just heard on the 8am news on RNZ that a victim who survived the mosque attack can only recieve 60 % of their income due to only having worked for some months. The man is married and has 4 children.
What I find to be unacceptable is that the family is having to wash their clothing by hand. Due to being on ACC the earner is not entitled to a Work and Income grant for a washing machine.
Who ever is managing the fund which was raised, has overlooked what practical/essential assistance a family requires.
Each time the family washes their clothing they should not be reminded of why there is no washing machine.
My mother did not have a washing machine until the 6th child was born in 1961. Her hands would have been swollen and sore.
Shame on whoever has deprived the family and immediate action is required to assist victims where there is a need.
It is the loss of income which is the reason there is no washing machine.
I did not say that any money raised was for the loss of income.
There is more on this story on RNZ just after 8.10 am. My power ran out, so I have not listened to it yet.
I would like to know what is on the list which the donations are permitted for.
If this family were refugees why was there no washing machine or vacuum.
My mother was an orphaned refugee and when she went out into the world at age 21 the NZ govt provided her with sufficient clothing, a job and accommodation she could afford. This was in 1950.
The man on ACC was here on a work permit, his wife and family were overseas (not sure when they came to NZ). All victims of the mosque attacks are eligible to get permanent residence. The man's application is not yet processed.
I though that a person could apply for both ACC and Work and Income assistance but one reduces the final amount as is cancelled $ for $. Also even though residence of 24 months is required I thought that is what an emergency benefit was for.
……a subject that has been grinding my gears of late has been some of the static that has followed the initiative of putting free lunches into schools.What a surprise it was to hear (or sadly not that much of a surprise) so many narrow minded comments on both radio and TV, when the trial was announced by Government."Isn't it the parents responsibility" …"why aren't they budgeting better"… or the old classic "what, so the parents can spend more on smokes". What an embarrassment. To think so many people are that detached and quite prepared in their comments to punish the child rather than consider the underlying dynamics…….
…. it is the cohort that now includes many working poor that are exposed to the brunt of the changes.When you are earning $600 but your unavoidable bills are $650, that's not a budgeting issue, that's a crisis with no apparent solution.But not once have I heard that issue raised as a causative factor as to why a child may be coming to school hungry.The prioritising required of the impoverished is a challenge that the detached would benefit from experiencing.But in the meantime I think silence would be the best contribution they could make to the discussions.
Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt, who also has a role as an SIT ambassador, was particularly scathing of Hipkins' plans and want they meant for Invercargill.Shadbolt and SIT chief executive Penny Simmonds also indicated they would look at potential legal options on the back of the announcement.
Cadogan said many of the other polytechnics had been quite accepting of Thursday's announcement and he would prefer a similar approach from those in the deep south."At the moment we should be working to discuss the positives and what we can do to position us for the future."He said SIT's strength put it in a strong position when working through the detail of the merger.Rather than fighting it, Cadogan said the focus should centre on working with the Establishment Board for a positive outcome for the lower South Island. He has applauded Hipkins' "bold" move to restructure what Cadogan said was a broken polytechnic and training institute system.
Even if poor parenting is the reason kids are hungry at school, that's not the kid's fault.
I've come across plenty of people with punitive views towards the impoverished. But even they can't come up with a reason why kids should suffer the consequence of going hungry because of their parents' choices. (But they're really good at changing the subject when you ask why the kids should suffer)
Ensuring kids get at least one decent feed a day, five days a week, would give the kids suffering the biggest opportunity gaps a boost way out of proportion to the tiny cost involved. FFS, even most places in the US have worked out some way to ensure the worst-off kids get a free lunch at school.
Do you think this should be expanded because of school holidays? Children need decent nutrition 24/7, not just during school terms. In the US they can also get free (or bought) breakfast at school.
Absolutely expand it to 365 days, if anyone can figure out the politics of how to get there from where we are now. But while I reckon Icould map out a politically workable path to feeding kids in schools, I've no idea how to swing a program that would feed them outside of school.
The US also has the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (food stamps). Not sure how often recipients have to reapply, but it's certainly longer-term and more secure than our one-off food benefit that you have to use within 3 days of getting it.
The Cadogan boys are an interesting pair, brother Tim is mayor of Central Otago and an interesting character too. On the face of it a Nat (very strong National majority in area) but when you dig deeper quite left.
Shadbolt needs to roll a blunt and inhale for a bit.
There is nothing stopping the southern Licensing trusts from continuing to fund free places to their local polytech – so exactly what harm to Southland is he on about?
Shadbolt is an establishment synchophant now. I wouldnt be suprised if he is a member of the National Party. He has been parroting all their lines for over a decade now.
Mind you, all Trotskyists seem to take the same course.
He'll probably be denounced by National's Red (or is that Blue?) Guards and paraded through Balclutha's main street naked with a billboard round his neck.
There's going to be a rearrangement of electorates in the South before the next election and things will change quite a bit due to the huge population growth in Queenstown Lakes and Central Otago. Quite on the cards that it could turn out to be not quite as blue as at present. Add in a couple of young incumbent MPs who seem to keep making fools of themselves by barking at every car that goes past, often missing the point completely, and it could be all on.
I had never even seen the link box. I had always just done the crude posting of the copied URL into the comment itself. It worked but it wasn't very pretty.
Hey now I can try and give much prettier links with text instead of just the URL. Never did master that before.
Followed your instructions but the same thing happened. When I submit, half the address line drops off. lprent is aware there is a glitch and will sort it when he gets the time. Only some of us appear to be affected.
Actually it is starting to look good. I have one more task at home, have no real required work at work. My slave master / student is heading away for weeks to the land of the deluded peasants (US), and I have almost a years complement of unused holiday time available.
However I also have a jury service notice – complete with a warning that is a trial in it for up to 5 weeks.
Here is why – 28 minutes – can do house work and listen. Elizabeth Anderson is Giant. Love her books, Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It) . is fantastic and a must read for anyone interested in political economy.
You can't help yourself being rude talking over the top of Jacinda.
I don't think that it's fair on the people victim of the parliament scandal these peoples should not be used as a political FOOTBALL.
Our farmers do have a very low carbon footprint but they can lower there carbon footprint more they just have to focus on a lower carbon footprint and lower there water use to help save our environment we need to all work together to get to a carbon neutral society by 2050 not fight about it letting t the years roll by in that process making becoming carbon neutral by 2050 harder and harder you WE have to start now.
Ka pai Geovana Pères Aotearoa Wahine WBO Champion all the best it's great to see more of our Wahine Sports Stars being given the Star light kia kaha.
I agree with Mark on the Basket Ball.
I agree with Marie views about on the parliament staff issues.
I… It warms Eco Maori Ngaku to see finally that the majority of people can see OUR reality on human cause climate change. Even more when I see that our Rangatahi can see the big picture clearly through all the putea that is spent trying to deceive OUR Realities on Human Cause Climate change. Kia kaha Rangatahi of the Papatuanuku keep up the excellent MAHI. Championing positive action to minimise climate change and become carbon neutral ASAP
Americans are waking up': two thirds say climate crisis must be addressed
Major CBS News poll released as part of Covering Climate Now, a collaboration of more than 250 news outlets around the world to strengthen coverage of the climate story
Young people have been galvanized by climate science being taught in schools as well as a spreading global activist movement spearheaded by Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who started a wave of school walkouts to demand action. Thunberg recently arrived in the US on a solar-powered yacht, ahead of a major United Nations climate summit in New York on 23 September.
This generational divide even cuts across party affiliation, with two-thirds of Republican voters aged under 45 considering it their duty to address the climate crisis, according to the CBS poll. Just 38% of Republicans aged over 45 feel the same.
“Younger Republicans are much more convinced climate change is a crisis and are supportive of action than older Republicans – which has big implications for the future of the party,” said Leiserowitz.
Around three-quarters of all respondents said they understand that climate change is melting the Arctic, raising sea levels and causing warmer summers. A further two-thirds accept that hurricanes will be made more severe by global heating. Hurricane Dorian, which recently devastated parts of the Bahamas, made 38% of Americans more concerned about the climate crisis, with 56% unswayed.
Leiserowitz said that the relationship between extreme weather events and concern over climate change is a complex one, with people already worried the most likely to say that their alarm has increased when a major storm or flood hits.
Regardless of concern over climate change there appears to be skepticism among Americans about how much humans can do about it. Just 19% said humans can stop rising temperatures and the associated impacts, with nearly half thinking it possible to slow but not stop the changes and 23% refusing to believe humans can do anything at all.
This may well influence the views of leading presidential contenders’ climate plans. Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders, for example, has proposed a rapid remodeling of society where planet-warming emissions from transport and power generation are eradicated within just 11 years
That's great the Japan Rugby World Cup is looking like a big secess that is good for the Game.
Still a lot of questions around that digger hitting the Auckland Airport fuel pipe.
Arsonists burning anything is boggling burning our tamariki schools is even worse idiots
Kia kaha to all the Tangata picking up the plastic waste from Tangaroa and our Awa we will change to a society that use minimal resources in everyday life.
That's is correct Maori and Pacific tamariki will be discriminated against the most in Schools. That has to stop.
Ngāti Kahu do not want a ship like Captain Cook landing in their harbor to celebrate Cooks arrival to Aotearoa Ka pai
I agree its not on that a social worker gave up the address were a destressed Wahine and tamariki to a out of control man who could do some dumb stuff.
Condolences to the Mullins Whanau for the loss have lost their Father.
I… we have to come up with new systems to minimise our usage taonga resources and minimise our waste by making a close loop system.
Eco Maori always likes listening to our great Kau matua stories and views on the Present kia kaha
To. Much Dug Clark teaching people vehicle mantince and serviceing fixing peoples cars just for the price of the parts in Kaitaia great skills to have
That's awesome our Taonga Te Kakapo indangered native parrot population has increased to 213 birds this year great mahi.
Its good to see you are concerned about human cause climate change.
Eco Maori sort of knows how some people feel when every conclusion I voice gets spun out to the Matariki.
Its great that Facebook is making changes to stop online extremists haters from using their platforms Ka pai don't give them any oxygen.
Its excellent to see Gull is moving into the South Island that will force the others to lower prices and save our consumers costs considerably kia Ora.
That's the way Customs is stopping more PEE like drugs from getting on New Zealand Street and ultimately destroying people lives.
He waimare etahi taangata He tangata taangata ahu.
Yes Te Kakapu native fish are rear with our degraded Wai quality in our Awa times are changing we are now going to treat our Taonga Wai with the respect it deserves.
Ka pai to Lisa for your massive feat swimming hundreds of miles for your cause Mana Wahine.
We must all make changes to the way we live now as the sooner we act the easier it will be to minimise global warming. The longer we wait the harder it will be to get to a carbon-free society its not ROCKET SCIENCE its logical.
Greta Thunberg to Congress: ‘You’re not trying hard enough. Sorry’
The Swedish environmentalist was one of several who spoke at a Senate climate crisis task force.
At a meeting of the Senate climate crisis task force on Tuesday, lawmakers praised a group of young activists for their leadership, their gumption and their display of wisdom far beyond their years. They then asked the teens for advice on how Congress might combat one of the most urgent and politically contentious threats confronting world leaders: climate change.
Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish activist who has galvanized young people across the world to strike for more action to combat the impact of global warming, politely reminded them that she was a student, not a scientist – or a senator.
“Please save your praise. We don’t want it,” she said. “Don’t invite us here to just tell us how inspiring we are without actually doing anything about it because it doesn’t lead to anything.
The Green New Deal is an ambitious 14-page resolution that calls for a “10-year national mobilization” that would eliminate the nation’s emissions in one decade. Scientists say limiting warming to 1.5C would require cutting manmade carbon levels by 45% by 2030 and reaching net zero around 2050.
Markey said their movement is shifting the political landscape. The senator pointed to the 2020 presidential debates as evidence of what has changed. Candidates are being asked about climate change and pushed to introduce plans to combat global warming. This is in stark contrast to 2016.
“What has happened? You have happened,” he told the activists. “You are giving this extra level of energy to the political process that is absolutely changing the dynamics of politics in the United States Ka kite Ano link below.
Typical of some business people say one thing in the public EYE and in the board rooms do the opposite what do we call them Lies. If they don't get on the climate mitigation waka they will lose their shoulders CASH. What a lot of business people haven't figured out is clean tech or anything that makes products with low or no carbon footprint is going to be the NEXT GOLD Rush. All the natural materials produced with low or no carbon will have a higher value .
Wall Street investment giants voting against key climate resolutions
Asset management companies BlackRock Inc and Vanguard have failed to live up to pledge to support climate action at energy firms
Some of Wall Street’s largest asset management companies are failing to live up to commitments to use their voting power to fight the climate crisis, according to a new report.
The report, published on Tuesday by the Washington DC-based Majority Action and the Climate Majority Project, claims that BlackRock Inc, the world’s largest asset manager with more than $6tn under management, and Vanguard, with assets of $5.2tn, have voted overwhelmingly against the key climate resolutions at energy companies, including a resolution at ExxonMobil’s annual shareholder meeting, and at Duke Energy.
Had BlackRock and Vanguard not torpedoed these investor efforts, at least 16 climate-critical shareholder resolutions at S&P 500 companies would have received majority support in 2019, representing a significant corporate shift on climate, the report claims.
Refusing to use their proxy votes to support shareholders’ resolutions means letting companies off the hook – even as the climate crisis threatens their investors, their business models and the planet, the group says.
“The climate crisis is well upon us, and leading investors are stepping up to press fossil-fuel-dependent companies to align their strategies to the goals of the Paris agreement but some of the largest US investment companies are severely lagging,” said Majority Action’s Eli Kasargod-Staub.
Majority Action, which delivered a petition of 129,000 petition signatures to Blackrock in April, claims it ranks at the bottom of the list of fund managers using their voting powers to force companies to act responsibly on climate.
Nicholas Eisenberger at the advisory firm Pure Energy Partners said he was encouraged by the growing awareness of the urgency of the climate crisis in the business sector.
“Large asset managers are just at the beginning of taking the urgent actions required to more aggressively confront the threat of climate change,” he said, describing them as battleships at the start of an emergency corrective turn.
“We seen a fundamental shift in the last two years in the understanding of the dangers climate change presents but the steps we’ve taken are nowhere near adequate to the task yet
Its excellent that Amazon is going to make The Lord Of The Rings TV series in Aotearoa we have A Beautiful Contry and the most environmental way to shear Aotearoa to the Papatuanuku is with Films and TV series.
Brain fart lol
Cool find in North Canterbury a tooth bird 62 million years old birds are beautiful creatures. Aotearoa Te Whenua of ancient birds.
Let's hope not to many Pilot whales get stranded in Te Tai tokorau. Pilot Whales have huge brains and bond with each other quite closely.
Reduce emissions /becoming carbon neutral is definitely great for everyone every living thing.
Pilot Whale stranding it cool that heaps of tangata working together to try and save the stranded awesome.
Its sad that tangata whenua of Whangarei is being cut out of there Taonga Wai
Its great that Tangata whenua tourists operator's are chasing more revenue from entertaing our guests. It would be great to see more of our guests experiencing the best place in Aotearoa Te Tairawhiti best hunting fishing first whenua to see Te Ra in Eco Maori view
Isac great innovation finding a valuable oil from industrial hemp teno pai.
Turangi sing to give up smoking anyway you can give the stuff up is cool.
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Mr Bombastic:Ironically, the media the academic experts wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to ...
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Mazda, a Japanese automotive manufacturer with a rich history of innovation and engineering excellence, has emerged as a formidable player in the global car market. Known for its reputation of producing high-quality, fuel-efficient, and driver-oriented vehicles, Mazda has consistently garnered praise from industry experts and consumers alike. In this article, ...
Struts are an essential part of a car’s suspension system. They are responsible for supporting the weight of the car and damping the oscillations of the springs. Struts are typically made of steel or aluminum and are filled with hydraulic fluid. How Do Struts Work? Struts work by transferring the ...
Car registration is a mandatory process that all vehicle owners must complete annually. This process involves registering your car with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and paying an associated fee. The registration process ensures that your vehicle is properly licensed and insured, and helps law enforcement and other authorities ...
Zoom is a video conferencing service that allows you to share your screen, webcam, and audio with other participants. In addition to sharing your own audio, you can also share the audio from your computer with other participants. This can be useful for playing music, sharing presentations with audio, or ...
Building your own computer can be a rewarding and cost-effective way to get a high-performance machine tailored to your specific needs. However, it also requires careful planning and execution, and one of the most important factors to consider is the time it will take. The exact time it takes to ...
Sleep mode is a power-saving state that allows your computer to quickly resume operation without having to boot up from scratch. This can be useful if you need to step away from your computer for a short period of time but don’t want to shut it down completely. There are ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Asia Pacific Report From France to Australia, university pro-Palestine protests in the United States have now spread to several countries with students pitching on-campus camps. And students at Columbia and other US universities remain defiant as campuses have witnessed the biggest protests since the anti-Vietnam war and anti-apartheid eras in ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards, Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)New Zealand Government’s Fast Track legislation. Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government ...
Tara Ward talks to presenter Naomi Toilalo about the new TV show that turns food waste into a three course feast. Naomi Toilalo is standing in the warehouse at Good Neighbour Tauranga, helping unpack the two-and-a-half tonnes of rejected food that will arrive at the community support hub that day. ...
Scout is our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Scout’s human, Avril, for her support. Dog name: Scout (named after the little girl in To Kill a Mockingbird – she inherited the independent spirit ...
Megan Alatini takes us through her life in TV, including ‘terrible’ daytime TV, the class of Carol Hirschfeld and her most embarrassing TrueBliss moment. When she responded to a vague newspaper ad asking “do you have what it takes to be a popstar?” 25 years ago, Megan Alatini never guessed ...
A new exhibition in Wellington showcases the faces behind your local goods and services. Back in 1977, when I was a fine arts student at the University of Canterbury, I took a series of photographs of Christchurch shopkeepers. The photos were for a calendar – a project for my end ...
Toomaj and his resistance to tyranny through his songs have become an icon for the youth of Iran, so his sentence has hit the nation hard. Toomaj Salehi is not the first artist to pay the price for standing with the people. ...
My cousin Dylan and I spotted these big eels under the bridge that summer. We watched them lounging under the dark weed, facing into the flow of water, their mouths frozen open. Dylan and I couldn’t stop thinking about those eels. The night we went down to the creek, we ...
Newsroom, home of satire. My long-running weekly satirical series The Secret Diary has moved to Newsroom and will appear every Saturday, with Victor Billot’s wildly popular satirical Odes continuing to appear every Sunday. Diaries, Odes – while serious political columnists toil at meaningful opinions and stroke their chins to an ...
Tara Ward unravels the many nuanced layers of a cartoon about talking dogs.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. It’s not often an episode of a children’s cartoon has adults sobbing into their sleeves, but that’s exactly what happened this week when ...
Working as a doctor in developing countries to help communities achieve better health outcomes is nothing short of a life goal for Jessica Tater. The University of Otago medical student has her sights firmly set on joining the international humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) when she qualifies ...
There’s an island in the far reaches of Auckland’s territory, sitting off the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula, 30 minutes by air from the city or four hours on the slow boat. Aotea Great Barrier is off-grid, it has a population of fewer than a thousand people … and most ...
Asia Pacific Report An Australian author and advocate, Jim Aubrey, today led a national symbolic one minute’s silence to mark the “blood debt” owed to Papuan allies during the Second World War indigenous resistance against the invading Japanese forces. “A promise to most people is a promise,” Aubrey said in ...
Asia Pacific Report The Freedom Flotilla is ready to sail to Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza. All the required paperwork has been submitted to the port authority, and the cargo has been loaded and prepared for the humanitarian trip to the besieged enclave. However, organisers received word of an “administrative ...
Pacific Media Watch Palestine solidarity protesters today demonstrated at the Auckland headquarters of Television New Zealand, accusing the country’s major TV network of broadcasting “propaganda” backing Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. About 50 protesters targeted the main entrance to the TVNZ building near Sky Tower and also picketed a side ...
Opinion by Lynley Hood. Forty years on from my 1985 Fulbright Grant, my disquiet over the war in Gaza evoked some troubling questions. The answer to my first question – What is the primary purpose of the Fulbright Programme? – was on the Fulbright NZ website. It says: US Senator, ...
The ministers responsible for green-lighting major projects need to be open about potential conflicts of interest, says Transparency International. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Professor, Family and Sexual Violence, RMIT University It has been a particularly distressing start to the year. There is little that can ease the current grief of individuals, families and communities who have needlessly lost a loved one to men’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Lichen, the first described example of symbiosis.AdeJ Artventure/Shutterstock Once known only to those studying biology, the word symbiosis is now widely used. Symbiosis is the intimate ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Hemsley, Head, Childhood Dementia Research Group, Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University Olena Ivanova/Shutterstock “Childhood” and “dementia” are two words we wish we didn’t have to use together. But sadly, around 1,400 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University The government’s Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee has just published its second report. It was set up by Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth in 2022 to provide: ...
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 The Queensland state election will be held in October. A YouGov poll for The Courier Mail, conducted April 9–17 from a sample ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Naeni, PhD candidate at Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University There’s been much talk in recent months about what a possible second Donald Trump presidency in the United States could mean for Europe, Russia’s war in Ukraine, the ...
A brief round-up of submissions on the controversial proposed law. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week, submissions on the controversial Fast-track Approvals Bill closed just hours after the government released a list of stakeholder organisations who were sent letters advising how they could ...
A poem from Robin Peace’s new collection Detritus of Empire: feather / grass / rock. Cereal giving I see a woman’s hands, see her curious hands break a stalk as she walks through the tall prairie, the savannah, the steppe, wherever it was. See her idly bite the grass that ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Hemingway’s Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)A handsomely produced (debossed cover, lovely ...
The Commissioner's decision validates the longstanding efforts of the local community and ensures that Awataha Marae will be managed to serve the needs of the local community, particularly for hosting tangihanga. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Salles, Associate professor, University of Sydney Examples of Australian landscapes.Unsplash Seventy thousand years ago, the sea level was much lower than today. Australia, along with New Guinea and Tasmania, formed a connected landmass known as Sahul. Around this time – ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felicity Castagna, Lecturer, Creative Writing, Western Sydney University Day Day Market, ParramattaPhoto: Garry Trinh I live on the edge of Parramatta, Australia’s fastest-growing city, on the kind of old-fashioned suburban street that has 1950s fibros constructed in the post-war housing boom, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Ryan, Teaching Fellow in Economics, University of Waikato GettyImagesfatido/Getty Images There is an ongoing global debate over whether the high inflation seen in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic can be lowered without a recession. New Zealand is not ...
The ‘Wicked Game’ heartthrob is in his late 60s now. That didn’t stop him putting on a lively, goofy and very sparkly show. Apart from ‘Wicked Game’, which graces a sultry playlist of mine simply called 💋, my last sustained Chris Isaak listening session took place when I was about ...
Analysis - Two ministers were stripped of portfolios in a warning to Cabinet, drama broke out at the Waitangi Tribunal, and the gang patch ban bill ran into opposition. ...
Tara Ward makes an impassioned plea for some vital pop culture merch. In April 1999, I became obsessed with a new reality television show called Popstars. Every Tuesday night, five strangers transformed into music royalty before my very eyes as Joe, Keri, Carly, Erika and Megan were chosen to form ...
PNG Post-Courier In the early hours of ANZAC Day, aerial photographs captured an impressive gathering of Australians and Papua New Guineans at Isurava in the Northern (Oro) Province. The solemn dawn service yesterday was held at a site steeped in history, where some of the fiercest battles of World War ...
The PSA is shocked that Oranga Tamariki has used the cost cutting drive to downgrade its commitment to Te Ao Māori and remove many specialist Māori roles. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Kemish, Adjunct Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland There can be no more powerful symbol of the relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea than the prime ministers of these neighbouring countries walking together on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sharon Robinson, Distinguished Professor and Deputy Director of ARC Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF), University of Wollongong, University of Wollongong Andrew Netherwood Over the last 25 years, the ozone hole which forming over Antarctica each spring has started to shrink. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Viktoria Kahui, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Economics, University of Otago Getty Images/Amy Toensing Biodiversity is declining at rates unprecedented in human history. This suggests the ways we currently use to manage our natural environment are failing. One emerging concept focuses on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Colin Bednall, Associate Professor in Management, Swinburne University of Technology marvent/Shutterstock Finding the best person to fill a position can be tough, from drafting a job ad to producing a shortlist of top interview candidates. Employers typically consider information from ...
Wondering where to host your next BYO? Whether its a small gathering or a massive party, we’ve got some recommendations. I was first introduced to the concept of BYOs at Dunedin’s India Gardens, a legendary but sadly defunct establishment, which purveyed enormous quantities of mango chicken to Aotearoa’s drunkest future ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julien Cooper, Honorary Lecturer, Department of History and Archaeology, Macquarie University Julien Cooper The hyper-arid desert of Eastern Sudan, the Atbai Desert, seems like an unlikely place to find evidence of ancient cattle herders. But in this dry environment, my new ...
The sector says it’s hopeful her replacement Paul Goldsmith will be able to throw it a lifeline, after six months with a minister deemed missing in action, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign ...
The government can't just rely on axing public sector jobs and has to do more to cut spending, says the chief economist at a free market think tank. ...
Rock The Vote NZ, known for its advocacy for minor party unity and its role within the Freedoms NZ Coalition during the 2023 General Election, celebrates this merger as a strategic enhancement of its operational strength and outreach. ...
Nearly everyone has experienced the frustration of something you use breaking and being difficult or expensive to fix. Proposed legislation could change that. It’s been raining on and off all Sunday afternoon but people are lining up outside a building in a corner of Gribblehirst Park in Sandringham, Auckland. In ...
What does a forever relationship look like when you don’t believe in marriage? And how do you celebrate it? This essay is part of our Sunday Essay series, made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.I’m going to do it, right now. I’m going to say ...
It’s not that long ago Eliza McCartney was seriously wondering if the Paris Olympics would be her pole vaulting swansong. After years of being hounded by injury after injury, the Rio Olympics bronze medallist was still confident she would compete at her second Olympics in Paris in July, unless something ...
FICTION 1 Take Two by Danielle Hawkins (Allen & Unwin, $36.99) There’s commercial fiction, like this book, and then there’s quality fiction, quality writers, quality literature; the forthcoming Auckland Writers Festival is full of quality, and ReadingRoom has two tickets to give away to the following events: Paul Lynch (Dublin ...
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You can’t have missed the Gallipoli story as the movies, documentaries, essays and books capture what it was like for New Zealand troops in their eight-month campaign on the Peninsula. But this Anzac Day the Auckland War Memorial Museum has published a book that sheds light on a little-known aspect of the ...
The Prime Minister has committed to resuming direct flights to Thailand. But it’s not a promise he will be able to deliver on anytime soon. The post Prime Minister jumps the gun in Thailand appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra In the free-for-all between the Australian government and Big Tech boss Elon Musk this week, the government had to be on a winner. Most people would have little sympathy with Musk’s vociferous opposition to ...
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Profile of an influential young NZ activist https://storyo.co/stories/laura-oconnell-rapira
Yay. In before Pete!
Not by much. 🙁
Can picture it. 7am alarm goes off. Jumps out of bed. Makes toast and a cuppa. Grabs the latest installment out of the newspaper and he’s off……….
It's also pretty easy to copy and paste a post you've already prepared for your own website: https://yournz.org/2019/09/15/complainant-labour-party-will-have-to-address-archaic-power-structure/
Yes. That crossed my mind but wanted to be short and sweet.
You're wrong. I posted here first, then decided to cut and paste to a post at YNZ.
Why are you being so petty?
Nothing petty about early morning amazement.
Petty messenger attacking again. Ironic particularly for Anne.
If I made things up like this about a regular here I suspect I'd be hammered for it.
And wrong. I was up at 5:30 researching for a house painting project I'm working on. Made. Watched Deep Blue with my granddaughter who is staying, then made a cuppa for everyone.
I was right about the cuppa then. 😀
You have no sense of humour Pete.
Well done.
Complainants want the Labour Party to address it's archaic power structure, and hope that Jacinda Ardern can make it happen.
Alison Mau:
I think that Ardern will understand that there's lot riding on this – for the victims of course, but also for the reputation of the Labour Party and it's attractiveness to young people, especially to young females.
Labour has talked about gender balance for years, but has failed to provide a safe environment for young people, especially females.
Note the names of those who seem to have been responsible for male staffer protection debacle – Nigel, Grant, Andrew, Rob.
And there's a lot riding on this for Jacinda herself. Her reputation, her primary attractiveness as a new generation leader who is a caring and empathetic champion of gender balance and rights, is on the line.
She needs to make sure the repair job from here is done transparently. If the inquiry terms of reference are stacked in favour of the party and the Council, if the report is kept secret like the last one, if there is a lack of openness and no public sign of real repair and progress, then Ardern have failed to live up to her PR, again.
"(We will tell her) here are some conditions that the party needs to look at, before any of us feel comfortable coming back into these (Labour) spaces."
That cannot be done in secret, because it is not just the group of victims who want change, it's the future of the party at stake. Prospective party recruits – volunteers and candidates – need to know that Labour has finally learnt from multiple failures and put things right.
Grant is not a staffer. Nice try though.
I didn't say he was a staffer.
It has been claimed (and not denied) that he was closely associated with the (now ex) staffer, and was aware of the seriousness of allegations and, if we are to believe Ardern, kept important information from her as did the other men named above.
Sorry, next time I will paste your words into my reply to make sure I read them more carefully. Could have sworn it said ‘the names of those staffers’.
"It has been claimed (and not denied)", and "if we are to believe" appear to be attempts to convince that any scurrilous accusation put forward without evidence must be given as much credence as supported facts. We have heard a lot of conjecture, and undoubtledly some fact, but separating the two has not been easy, or I suggest for most people possible. What started out as a complaint of office bullying seems to have developed into harrassment, sexual misconduct, and now serious sexual abuse. We don't know whether this is by a single individual to another individual, or by more than one of either culprit or victim. We generally trust our media, but we do not know what they have heard themselves or been told by others. I trust some of the media who have reported enough to believe that there has been some matters that needed and still need addressing. if we are talking about an employment matter it is not clear who that employer is – the Labour Party appears to have been involved but not Parliamentary Services. If there are criminal matters it is not clear why the victim(s) has or have not been prepared to report a crime to the police, or whether threats or inducements have discouraged police involvement. Now I have enough trust in our media to believe that they do not get everything wrong; I believe there has been at least one incident that either should not have happened and/or should have been dealt with differently. In the meantime the question of who knew what when is a sideshow, but a recent further article in the SpinOff does at least indicate that one journalist is convinced that Jacinda Ardern did not know of the extent of the complaints until last Monday.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/14-09-2019/on-the-labour-party-crisis-and-jacinda-ardern/
If you know more, Pete, then by all means post the information with the evidence – provides that does not impede a possible criminal investigation of course), but if you do not have impeccable evidence, perhaps it is better to wait rather than to assume that every "claim" is automatically credible.
Tracy Watkins: Jacinda Ardern must force Labour to face itself in the mirror
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/115804055/editorial-jacinda-ardern-must-force-labour-to-face-itself-in-the-mirror
[Added the correct punctuation in the quoted text; you wouldn’t want to create an impression that you might be quoting selectively, would you? Pete, you should know and do better. Next time, I’ll delete the text and only leave the link. In fact, I getting itchy fingers when I see large texts being copied & pasted here – Incognito]
[Pete should know better as he had a three week ban for the same thing in 2017. Perhaps he forgot, but I think another ban now will help him cement this in his mind. He’s also been moderated more than once in various ways over not linking.
Pete, you’re a really long term commenter, you know the deal: always link, don’t misquote, and try to avoid long tracts of cut and pastes. Looking at your comments to Sacha you appear to not understand the problem here. When you cut and past different pieces of an article you have to make it clear that they are not one block of text. If you still don’t get this, ask one of the moderators for clarification when you get back.
3 weeks again, given it’s been a long time, but expect bans to get longer for repeat offenses. Interim ban, as I’ll run this past the mods already active in this thread – weka]
[ban reduced to a week. Pete the key point here about quoting is that if you post separate sections of someone else’s work, you have to make it clear you have removed bits. This is quite different than what Sacha did, which was to post part of an article, but with no bits cut out of the part he quoted – weka]
The outcome must be that NZ faces itself in the "mirror". I'm a bit perplexed, and the use of the words men & women is solely to make a point that has occurred to me. In various comments and positions on this on an emotive level, and not necessarily based on facts that anyone can confirm, some of those now most concerned with the victims have not displayed that concern previously and appear to be purely political. Has it it been decided from an editorial perspective that having mainly "women" journalists, it appears to me anyway carry the message these or any offences are Labour's "fault". I hope not because the story, the facts and where that leads NZ is all I want to hear.
Labour has been at fault here. Not once but twice, badly, with multiple victims in both.
But it is symptomatic of whole of New Zealand society problems. The National Party has had it's own embarrassing problems, publicly as recently as last year.
Law firms have been in the spotlight.
It is generally and strongly agreed that our judicial system has is not fit for purpose, overall and particularly related to sex offences (and probably violence offences which are often connected).
Abuse of power is a common factor.
The law business community has tried to fix it's problems.
National say they have addressed their handling of bullying and sexual matters in the wake of the Jami-Lee Ross affairs. There's no way of the public knowing if that has been effective.
A review of the judicial system is currently under way.
And Labour re running their own inquiry into their mishandling of things.
Media will be scrutinising how Labour handles this.
While it is a whole society problem a lot depends on how Labour handles this.
For a start, it could be a major factor in determining who our next Government is led by.
But it's bigger than that. If the Prime Minister and the major governing party openly deal with this well it will (finally) set a good example from the top that society needs to reform how it views and deals with bullying. violence, sexual violence and abuse of power.
If Labour sweep this under the carpet again then (some of) society will see this as a signal that sweeping under the carpet and business as usual (abuse as usual) is still normal practice.
I'm fine with that but remain perplexed that Nat Party inquiries and outcomes were not so scrutinised and followed up on by media.
National had just one major issue last year, Jami Lee Ross.
Labour stuffed up twice in a row.
Another difference is that the first of Labour's issues (summer camp attacks) involved illegal behaviour that went to court.
And the second has allegations of serious offences that many think should have gone to court.
There's also the problem that Ardern was seen as a champion of young people and of women's rights, and is seen to have failed on both.
Look, other than those who abuse and those who will use any part of this for political gain I can not think anyone who would want anything other than this "(finally) set a good example", can you?
…the first of Labour's issues (summer camp attacks) involved illegal behaviour that went to court.
It involved illegal behaviour of the kind that happens at parties in this country every weekend and doesn't usually end up in court because the media aren't interested and there's no political propaganda to be had from it. The perps in those cases are usually either not dealt with, or dealt with via public shaming or violence rather than complaints to the Police.
The fact that some men behave like that when drunk is a rape culture issue, not a Labour Party issue, and the prurient interest in this particular instance is mostly either politically motivated or just hand-wringing from conservatives who've led sheltered lives. Or both, I suspect, in your case.
I think this is a good summary.
Reflect on the rugby player in an airport toilet situation a couple of years back. Not the 'incident', the media handling of it and the explosion of public hysteria that generated.
The media love a good feeding frenzy and generating one is good for business, and egos. Couple that with the team at newstalkzb and the likes of Matthew Hooton quite simply wanting Labour and Jacinda Arden gone, the scenario is perfect.
Thank you, as a mother and a grandmother I have kept my opinion on that incident largely to myself as I knew it would not be popular to say what I thought and how I would use such examples. In an effort to keep them all safe "boys & girls" pointing out that things may not turn out always as you hope was a mainstay. That's not about blame it is about people, young people who as you say across the country can end up making utter fools of themselves when alcohol is at hand and even when it's not. That is part of the lesson the young need to learn hopefully sooner rather than later and even more so on the roads and in cars!
Granted there is a rape culture issue with drunken youth but this was a Labour Camp for under 16's where there was lotsa booze available and it was sanctioned by Labour. Not too many of us would allow or have a cabinet of (free?) booze at our children's 16th birthdays and not too many parents would approve of their children attending any teenage function where liquor was freely available to them. I think the party has to own this.
My parents sure as hell wouldn't have approved of the drinking I was doing at ages 15 – 17, but on the plus side, what they didn't know didn't hurt them. All this hand-wringing about Labour failing to prevent alcohol sullying the sacred temple of teenagers' bodies makes Doug Sellman look like a bad-ass.
Are you sure it was a camp "for" under 16s or a youth camp that incl that group and above, I very much doubt there were 13-15s there but you can correct me with some facts.
So much of the Jamie Lee Ross superbly mismanaged debacle was hidden. There's a lot there we need to know. Pompous Paula was right out of line divulging private information on public television which started Jamie's downward mental spiral.
Also what happened to that poor ' mistreated' woman Sarah Cowie who also in a drunken rage of rejection also contributed to his ultimate step of thinking of ending his life.
NOTHING! She's still in her very responsible role in the NationalParty. So what she did was acceptable to them?? Some double standards in there somewhere.
And petulant,perfidious Paula preaching from her pulpit of presumed power should take a look in her own back yard before trying to topple Jacinda with rabid rhetoric. I'm sure there is any amount of weed there that needs to be exposed. For the good of the country of course. Paula is fuelled by hatred for Jacind a.
National had just one major issue last year, Jami Lee Ross.
Pfft. There were two that we know about.
What about Richard Worth? He sexually abused two women (the ones we know about) and got away with it.
What about Mike Sabin?
Very selective in your interminably long and boring offerings aren't you.
I you're going back that fr why re you being selective and omitting the likes of Hughes?
Worth was quickly dumped by Key. Media have compared that prompt action to Ardern's inaction.
Compared it how, exactly? Key's "prompt action" was very good for him and the National Party but did nothing for Worth's victims, nothing to improve public awareness of rape culture and how to respond to it, and nothing for openness and transparency in government. The fact that you compare Key favourably with Ardern in that case suggests you're thinking of this entirely in terms of how cleverly some players are playing a game.
Yes, prompt action is the only way – if only the people who were complained to had had the nous to realise that. And Key had never promised the most open and transparent Govt. ever.
Yes, prompt action is the only way…
In that particular case, it was the best way to minimise political damage to brand Key and the National Party. Whether it was also a good thing for the victims or not we'll never know, but my money's on them not getting even a second thought.
And Key had never promised the most open and transparent Govt. ever.
I don't recall Ardern promising that either.
It's commendably honest of right-wingers to admit that they just assume a National government's going to act in its own interests and conceal that from voters, but unfortunately (and I get sick of having to point this out), National itself is not so honest:
Bill English, 2014:
He told TV3's The Nation this morning that Prime Minister John Key ran the "most transparent government that New Zealand's ever seen".
It may or may not go to court. What many think is irrelevant to the due process except for putting undue pressure on those who could make it happen.
Public perception and opinion is influenced if not manipulated to a large degree by the media. To me, you come across as a media accomplice not as a truth seeker. I prefer the latter and these people differentiate themselves from the main crowd not be being more intelligent, more confident, or being louder (e.g. boasting and bragging) but by nuance, humility, sophisticated and critical thinking, and generally admitting that they know
shitnothing in the first place.Ummm. Have you ever actually read a report of this kind? I have.
It is full of material that was given under confidentiality, is full of inadmissible hearsay, people names, and is deeply prejudicial to any subsequent court processes.
Releasing it may be appreciated to the prurient dribblers slavering over the underwear details. However it doesn’t help anyone apart from journalists after column inches and airtime.
Perhaps you and the idiot who wrote that quoted piece should engage your brain rather than your lust for gossip and consider what options gets killed if that kind of report gets released. For a start, just think of the consequences for victims.
Sometimes you are just an idiot.
Are you under the impression we don't know where Stuff is or something, Pete?
He's like a dog with an old bone. Can't leave it alone. Either that or he is trolling in which case it might be necessary for a moderator to intervene. It's been going on for nearly a week.
I do not believe Mr George is trolling, just fixated.
It can be a fine line between being fixated and needing a fix.
So you're trying to influence moderators to shut things down?
This has been the biggest story in political media all week. Given how important it is to Labour, I would have thought it would be of interest to discussions here – unless the intent is to aid the apparent Labour Party coverups, which looks increasingly what some are trying to do.
[lprent: You must be blind. There have been comments all over the site for days. Unlike you, some of them have actually had suggestions about what should be done to prevent this kind of crap again.
I realise that you prefer to act as a brainless critic who carps and can’t offer any ideas. But perhaps you should try exercising your brain a bit.
But my toleration for outright lying by you and other is wearing very thin. If you can’t bring yourself to actually participate in debate about how to solve a problem – then leave. ]
It's Sacha and Anne who have been making things up here, but par for the course for me to get the threats to shut up..
What have I made up?
9 September 2019 at 12:19 pm
"There were these two terriers who loved the scent of blood…"
No, I'm under the impression that people here have been trying to avoid discussing an issue that is important not just to Labour but to the Government and the country.
And I don't care what sources you may read, I'm not doing it for you.
You could ignore things here that you've already read rather than join the petty pile-on.
Just as well there's a fearless moral conscience here to set things straight then. Undies on the outside!
I'm under the impression that people here have been trying to avoid discussing an issue that is important not just to Labour but to the Government and the country.
The lengthy threads of people discussing it gave you that impression, did they? I dread to think what you imagine not avoiding discussing it would like.
I haven’t noticed that Pete George has managed to suggest anything constructive on this topic. He still appears to be coming up to speed with his own lack of knowledge on the issues.
In fact his most recent post quotes some actual sensible advice from Young Labour via Alison Mau that appears to have been written here. That essentially says that the Labour Party shouldn’t try to rely on internal expertise to handle these kinds of issues, but should get outside expertise.
Reading PG, it is hard to see that he managed to grasp the point. That the core problem is that Labour simply doesn’t have in-house expertise and shouldn’t be trying to do their own investigations.
They’re saying a QC – but fundamentally that is way too expensive to do every time that someone raises these kinds of issues.
To be frank it’d be simpler to disband Young Labour so the Labour Party can get on with what we pay levies for. Just about every dumbarse political crap of this kind has arisen out Young Labour or the barely grown dickheads having access to them (think Darren Hughes).
Or perhaps the answer go the other way give and give the Labour Party the authority to launch criminal prosecutions. There are some National MPs and ex ones that I would be interested in seeing in court explaining their behaviour….
Perhaps Pete should try to contribute his actual ideas rather than stroking his outrage
Couldn't agree more!
In my day we young things worked through the main party. We learned from our elders how to behave in a political environment and they gave us the benefit of their knowledge and expertise, so that we were well informed and could avoid the ever present pit-falls of political life. Most of all we learnt how to socialise with all age groups and to show respect for the elderly who knew a darn sight more about life than we did.
I am opposed to lowering the voting age precisely for the type of behaviour we have seen in recent times and which has become all too prevalent among so many young people in this country.
The people who caused a problem were not Young Labour this time. Two people with vast experience made bad decisions, which has made things harder for the complainants and definitely harder for the PM.
She went to the heart of it.
1. What the complainants needed to happen
2. An independent 3rd party to look at actions and facts.
3. The PM to be kept in the loop.
Out of all of that….
4. To change Labour's culture in this sphere to make the Party spaces safer in the future.
May it succeed.
I disagree about disbanding Young Labour. A Youth wing is essentially the school/club rugby of a political party – people build skills, connections and interests, and also do a lot of the ground work for local actions.
But all youth groups need to be properly supervised, otherwise harmful cultures can build up (especially around alcohol).
But this staffer thing has nothing really to do with Young Labour beyond an incidental connection and that it shows Labour didn't learn a damned thing about how to deal with sensitive complaints in an informal environment.
So – what about the children? Labour can'yt disassociate itself from pastoral care for its voters and its young adherents in Young Labour as well. Get back to some good old fashioned interest and leadership for the young where it isn't all about money and immediate power and advantage.
I was thinking more "have a rotating watch of authority figures who intervene to stop people getting too drunk", sort of thing.
What the YL incident and the student law society camp complaints in the last few years had in common was that most things being complained about happened after the adults/authority figures left/went to bed.
Then there's the issue of how to resolve complaints after they occur.
Prevention, and if prevention fails go to treatment.
Yeah nah – the Key government moved heaven and earth to protect Mike Sabin.
Any process becomes difficult when the guy running it is the guy you're trying to stop.
See my Moderation note @ 7:49 AM.
I see that. So Sacha can selectively quote, then complain about me selectively quoting, and you choose to dump on me? (I know it's your call).
[Don’t be so melodramatic! You know how things work here and you have been warned before about your incessant pasting & linking here. It is in the Policy:
I’m not impressed with you playing dumb and/or tit-for-tat games with Sacha.
Your hypersensitivity to criticism is showing. I did not “dump” on you; I warned you through a moderation note, and the correct term for that is “moderate”. Please note that you have been wasting moderators’ time [plural] and if you keep this up you will be ‘dumped’ (you and I know it’s your call) – Incognito]
[Edit: I just saw that Weka has already taken action that is more decisive; I’m just fudge]
See my Moderation note @ 12:32 PM.
Pete is lucky I didn't see the dumping comment until after I had moderated. I agree the ball is in his court now (there's a note in the back end about the length of the ban).
Thanks and I responded in the back-end.
moderation note for you Pete.
"The Wheels of Justice turn slowly but exceedingly fine."
Pete, please show it when you leave out chunks of an article as you have done here in at least two separate posts today. I understand you are simplifying but wrapping quotes around the whole passage misrepresents the original source.
Posting such large parts of each article may also discourage readers here from bothering to click through to the original. Took me a second coffee.
You "left out chunks" of the article that you quoted from.
Which article?
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-15-09-2019/#comment-1655068
[HTH]
[link fixed – weka]
Do you mean my post #1? What have I left out from between the two (continuous) paragraphs I quoted?
A moderator has fixed one of yours above at 2.2, for comparison.
The staff of the Labour party are about 20-30 people all up. I believe that most if not all have had this training. Certainly we don’t appear to have received any complaints from them about their behaviour.
Where they have arisen to date they have come from (in no particular order) volunteers, MPs, parliamentary staff, and random idiots who apparently weren’t even members and just turned up.
Certainly the party needs to craft a policy on it. That should be farmed out to someone with actual expertise in dealing with workplace bullying and sexual assaults. Their primary role shouldn’t be to investigate. It should be to support and shepard the complaints to the appropriate authorities so that they get dealt with.
this piece from jonothan franzen has been getting some attention..
in it he argues that we are pretty much fucked..
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending
'The climate apocalypse is coming.
To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it.'
Great article which pretty much sums up my feelings towards this and many other issues. For all the platitudes and tokenism their isn't actually the political and social will to make the changes necessary to prevent this impending doom. There will be one day when we are on the precipice of the apocalypse. But when that day arrives, a hollow feeling will swell in those peoples stomachs when they finally realize that they can now do nothing, their time has come and gone, and any grand scheme to prevent our destructions time was 20 to 50 years ago. As I said last week, I have taken steps to ensure my hopeful survival and adapt as best as I can. Will it work? Probably not, but at least I'm giving it my best effort. If only our leaders and people in influence would do the same.
There will be one day when we are on the precipice of the apocalypse. But when that day arrives, a hollow feeling will swell in those peoples stomachs when they finally realize that they can now do nothing,
Has that day arrived? There is significant evidence that the ssw event has forced a catastrophic (bifurcation ) reversal in the antarctic atmosphere.ie near reversal of the polar vortex,decreased ozone loss (and breakup of the ozone hole)
The increased probability for a wetter,colder and windier spring,summer in NZ with decreased mean T.Is that good for NZ?
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/STRAT/gif/pole10_sh.gif
https://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/meteorology/figures/ozone/omds_2019_toms+omi+omps.pdf
https://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/meteorology/figures/merra2/wind/u45_75s_10_2019_merra2.pdf
I personally believe that day arrived 15 years ago. All we can really do now imo is prepare as best we can for a horrible future.
The problem with Franzen article,is that he cited a paper where he invoked catastrophe (which did not exist)
According to a recent paper in Nature, the carbon emissions from existing global infrastructure, if operated through its normal lifetime, will exceed our entire emissions “allowance”—the further gigatons of carbon that can be released without crossing the threshold of catastrophe.
https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira/status/1170775296825425922
cant access the graph you have in your link but ask the question…do you accept the rational behind the IPCC's target of staying below a 2 deg C increase?
rationale
Here is a better graph from the paper using the IPCC scenario.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EAl1NApXoAAfSLK.jpg:large
My opinion is to read what the science is suggesting.Not what various purveyors of crisis are suggesting.
The emergent scientific consensus is the IPCC science irrationally.Not by sceptics but alarmists and it has no place in science analysis.
the wmo sg statement here.
In my interview, I made clear that a science-based approach underpins climate action, and that our best science shows that the climate is changing, driven in large part by human action. However, I pointed out that the science-based approach is undermined when facts are taken out of context to justify extreme measures in the name of climate action.
https://public.wmo.int/en/media/news/statement-wmo-secretary-general-petteri-taalas
so thats a negative….well i do accept the IPCC rationale advocating 2 deg C as a likely tipping point to unrecoverable climate change that is outside our habitability…maybe a little less or more…and on that basis the statement that if the existing infrastructure burns FF forhe estimated lifespan of that infrastructure we will well exceed the carbon budget for 2 deg C is obviously right…so the statement in the article is accurate
I said read what the science says (not what you think i said)
2c is not a tipping point .That s your unscientific opinion of a mathematical statement ie it has a strict description (including grammar) no more no less,and of which your understanding would be say limited.
2 deg C (above pre industrial average) has been determined as a point where unrecoverable climate feedbacks will (with a high degree of probability) be triggered…with your superior understanding of scientific principle do you wish to dispute that is the position of the IPCC?
A tipping point is a bifurcation.back to back saddle node,and or Shilnikov in the case of the ENSO complex system with regime change due to negative feedbacks
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Saddle-node_bifurcation
Large amplitude response to feedbacks appear only in linear systems and have significant constraints on prediction of complex systems. eg Zalipin and Ghil.
We revisit a recent claim that the Earth’s climate system is characterized by sensitive dependence to parameters; in particular, that the system exhibits an asymmetric,large-amplitude response to normally distributed feedback forcing. Such a response would imply irreducible uncertainty in climate change predictions and thus have notable implications for climate science and climate-related policy making. We show that equilibrium climate sensitivity in all generality does not support such an intrinsic indeterminacy; the latter appears only in essentially linear systems.The main flaw in the analysis that led to this claim is in-appropriate linearization of an intrinsically nonlinear model;there is no room for physical interpretations or policy conclusions based on this mathematical error.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1003.0253.pdf
You're planning on being cryogenically frozen…?
No, I'm going to upload my conciousness to a computer and come back as a Kelly Lebrock lookalike human hybrid like in the movie weird science…
"To judge from recent opinion polls, which show that a majority of Americans (many of them Republican) are pessimistic about the planet’s future, and from the success of a book like David Wallace-Wells’s harrowing “The Uninhabitable Earth,” which was released this year, I’m not alone in having reached this conclusion. But there continues to be a reluctance to broadcast it. Some climate activists argue that if we publicly admit that the problem can’t be solved, it will discourage people from taking any ameliorative action at all. This seems to me not only a patronizing calculation but an ineffectual one, given how little progress we have to show for it to date. The activists who make it remind me of the religious leaders who fear that, without the promise of eternal salvation, people won’t bother to behave well. In my experience, nonbelievers are no less loving of their neighbors than believers. And so I wonder what might happen if, instead of denying reality, we told ourselves the truth."
Could have written it myself….if I could write,
Good link
A stupid false binary from Frantzen.
We're all obligated to do our best to mitigate climate change – to whatever temperature our collective efforts merit.
He should stick to being a novelist – which is the one thing he’s good at.
I have just heard on the 8am news on RNZ that a victim who survived the mosque attack can only recieve 60 % of their income due to only having worked for some months. The man is married and has 4 children.
What I find to be unacceptable is that the family is having to wash their clothing by hand. Due to being on ACC the earner is not entitled to a Work and Income grant for a washing machine.
Who ever is managing the fund which was raised, has overlooked what practical/essential assistance a family requires.
Each time the family washes their clothing they should not be reminded of why there is no washing machine.
My mother did not have a washing machine until the 6th child was born in 1961. Her hands would have been swollen and sore.
Shame on whoever has deprived the family and immediate action is required to assist victims where there is a need.
No vacuum cleaner either.
Looking after the daily needs of these families is the least we can do as a nation. Disgusting.
What happened to the donated money?
It was never intended to make up for months of lost income. That's on how our govt have chosen to arrange matters.
It is the loss of income which is the reason there is no washing machine.
I did not say that any money raised was for the loss of income.
There is more on this story on RNZ just after 8.10 am. My power ran out, so I have not listened to it yet.
I would like to know what is on the list which the donations are permitted for.
If this family were refugees why was there no washing machine or vacuum.
My mother was an orphaned refugee and when she went out into the world at age 21 the NZ govt provided her with sufficient clothing, a job and accommodation she could afford. This was in 1950.
The man on ACC was here on a work permit, his wife and family were overseas (not sure when they came to NZ). All victims of the mosque attacks are eligible to get permanent residence. The man's application is not yet processed.
I though that a person could apply for both ACC and Work and Income assistance but one reduces the final amount as is cancelled $ for $. Also even though residence of 24 months is required I thought that is what an emergency benefit was for.
A W&I and ACC advocate needs to become involved.
Also he stepped from the ranks recently to say
Even if poor parenting is the reason kids are hungry at school, that's not the kid's fault.
I've come across plenty of people with punitive views towards the impoverished. But even they can't come up with a reason why kids should suffer the consequence of going hungry because of their parents' choices. (But they're really good at changing the subject when you ask why the kids should suffer)
Ensuring kids get at least one decent feed a day, five days a week, would give the kids suffering the biggest opportunity gaps a boost way out of proportion to the tiny cost involved. FFS, even most places in the US have worked out some way to ensure the worst-off kids get a free lunch at school.
Do you think this should be expanded because of school holidays? Children need decent nutrition 24/7, not just during school terms. In the US they can also get free (or bought) breakfast at school.
Absolutely expand it to 365 days, if anyone can figure out the politics of how to get there from where we are now. But while I reckon I could map out a politically workable path to feeding kids in schools, I've no idea how to swing a program that would feed them outside of school.
The US also has the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (food stamps). Not sure how often recipients have to reapply, but it's certainly longer-term and more secure than our one-off food benefit that you have to use within 3 days of getting it.
The Cadogan boys are an interesting pair, brother Tim is mayor of Central Otago and an interesting character too. On the face of it a Nat (very strong National majority in area) but when you dig deeper quite left.
https://crux.org.nz/2019-local-body-elections/tim-cadogan/ (edit, link is a 10 minute video covering Tim’s local politics)
Shadbolt needs to roll a blunt and inhale for a bit.
There is nothing stopping the southern Licensing trusts from continuing to fund free places to their local polytech – so exactly what harm to Southland is he on about?
Shadbolt is an establishment synchophant now. I wouldnt be suprised if he is a member of the National Party. He has been parroting all their lines for over a decade now.
Mind you, all Trotskyists seem to take the same course.
He'll probably be denounced by National's Red (or is that Blue?) Guards and paraded through Balclutha's main street naked with a billboard round his neck.
The population centres are not as blue in the south as one might think (with some notable exceptions)
There's going to be a rearrangement of electorates in the South before the next election and things will change quite a bit due to the huge population growth in Queenstown Lakes and Central Otago. Quite on the cards that it could turn out to be not quite as blue as at present. Add in a couple of young incumbent MPs who seem to keep making fools of themselves by barking at every car that goes past, often missing the point completely, and it could be all on.
Who needs Bolton to start a war?
https://twitter.com/bpolitics/status/1172971900664012802
Must be a delicate thing trying to time it right for the presidential election.
Republican diversity.
https://twitter.com/AdrienChorn_/status/1172539989030313984
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/09/elizabeth-heng-aoc-cambodia-khmer-rouge-new-voices.html
A local short story for your afternoon: https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/09/07/785976/saturday-short-story-the-black-monk-by-charlotte-grimshaw
People having trouble with linking to TS comments, here's how to do it:
If you want to make it fancier, you can put some words in the Display Text box.
I had never even seen the link box. I had always just done the crude posting of the copied URL into the comment itself. It worked but it wasn't very pretty.
Hey now I can try and give much prettier links with text instead of just the URL. Never did master that before.
Thank you for the tip.
Jeeze alwyn, I can't believe it, I thought you knew everything, just like Hosking.
concise 🙂
I'm sorry to destroy one of your cherished beliefs.
Now I am really going to spoil your day.
There is no Santa Claus!
Hi weka
Followed your instructions but the same thing happened. When I submit, half the address line drops off. lprent is aware there is a glitch and will sort it when he gets the time. Only some of us appear to be affected.
Time, if I only had time…
Actually it is starting to look good. I have one more task at home, have no real required work at work. My slave master / student is heading away for weeks to the land of the deluded peasants (US), and I have almost a years complement of unused holiday time available.
However I also have a jury service notice – complete with a warning that is a trial in it for up to 5 weeks.
Liberals, Leninists and the Libertarians suck.
Here is why – 28 minutes – can do house work and listen. Elizabeth Anderson is Giant. Love her books, Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It) . is fantastic and a must read for anyone interested in political economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNHpQK1Sie4&ab_channel=RTAmerica
Looks like Boris Johnson's tactics are working and Corbyn is even more ineffective.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/14/tories-extend-poll-lead-to-12-despite-week-of-political-chaos
Conservatives up 2%
Labour stays same.
Doesn't seem to match Gosman's point. Perhaps it was another poll?
A former president of the European Council has said he believes Brexit has changed EU attitudes to Scottish independence.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-49690513
Amidst the nutso reporting of late, a real scandal affecting hundreds of Kiwi families goes unremarked
https://twitter.com/hamish_keith/status/1172637706276364288?s=20
Kia Ora Newshub.
You can't help yourself being rude talking over the top of Jacinda.
I don't think that it's fair on the people victim of the parliament scandal these peoples should not be used as a political FOOTBALL.
Our farmers do have a very low carbon footprint but they can lower there carbon footprint more they just have to focus on a lower carbon footprint and lower there water use to help save our environment we need to all work together to get to a carbon neutral society by 2050 not fight about it letting t the years roll by in that process making becoming carbon neutral by 2050 harder and harder you WE have to start now.
Ka pai Geovana Pères Aotearoa Wahine WBO Champion all the best it's great to see more of our Wahine Sports Stars being given the Star light kia kaha.
I agree with Mark on the Basket Ball.
I agree with Marie views about on the parliament staff issues.
Ka kite Ano
Ka pai to the Bubbles foiling sea taxi in France cool new tech coming from France.
I… It warms Eco Maori Ngaku to see finally that the majority of people can see OUR reality on human cause climate change. Even more when I see that our Rangatahi can see the big picture clearly through all the putea that is spent trying to deceive OUR Realities on Human Cause Climate change. Kia kaha Rangatahi of the Papatuanuku keep up the excellent MAHI. Championing positive action to minimise climate change and become carbon neutral ASAP
Americans are waking up': two thirds say climate crisis must be addressed
Major CBS News poll released as part of Covering Climate Now, a collaboration of more than 250 news outlets around the world to strengthen coverage of the climate story
Young people have been galvanized by climate science being taught in schools as well as a spreading global activist movement spearheaded by Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who started a wave of school walkouts to demand action. Thunberg recently arrived in the US on a solar-powered yacht, ahead of a major United Nations climate summit in New York on 23 September.
This generational divide even cuts across party affiliation, with two-thirds of Republican voters aged under 45 considering it their duty to address the climate crisis, according to the CBS poll. Just 38% of Republicans aged over 45 feel the same.
“Younger Republicans are much more convinced climate change is a crisis and are supportive of action than older Republicans – which has big implications for the future of the party,” said Leiserowitz.
Around three-quarters of all respondents said they understand that climate change is melting the Arctic, raising sea levels and causing warmer summers. A further two-thirds accept that hurricanes will be made more severe by global heating. Hurricane Dorian, which recently devastated parts of the Bahamas, made 38% of Americans more concerned about the climate crisis, with 56% unswayed.
Leiserowitz said that the relationship between extreme weather events and concern over climate change is a complex one, with people already worried the most likely to say that their alarm has increased when a major storm or flood hits.
Regardless of concern over climate change there appears to be skepticism among Americans about how much humans can do about it. Just 19% said humans can stop rising temperatures and the associated impacts, with nearly half thinking it possible to slow but not stop the changes and 23% refusing to believe humans can do anything at all.
This may well influence the views of leading presidential contenders’ climate plans. Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders, for example, has proposed a rapid remodeling of society where planet-warming emissions from transport and power generation are eradicated within just 11 years
Ka kite Ano link below below.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/sep/15/americans-climate-change-crisis-cbs-poll
Kia Ora Newshub.
Kia Pai Winston Peters is back Kia Kaha.
That's great the Japan Rugby World Cup is looking like a big secess that is good for the Game.
Still a lot of questions around that digger hitting the Auckland Airport fuel pipe.
Arsonists burning anything is boggling burning our tamariki schools is even worse idiots
Kia kaha to all the Tangata picking up the plastic waste from Tangaroa and our Awa we will change to a society that use minimal resources in everyday life.
Ka kite Ano.
Kia Ora Te Ao Maori News.
That's is correct Maori and Pacific tamariki will be discriminated against the most in Schools. That has to stop.
Ngāti Kahu do not want a ship like Captain Cook landing in their harbor to celebrate Cooks arrival to Aotearoa Ka pai
I agree its not on that a social worker gave up the address were a destressed Wahine and tamariki to a out of control man who could do some dumb stuff.
Condolences to the Mullins Whanau for the loss have lost their Father.
I… we have to come up with new systems to minimise our usage taonga resources and minimise our waste by making a close loop system.
Eco Maori always likes listening to our great Kau matua stories and views on the Present kia kaha
To. Much Dug Clark teaching people vehicle mantince and serviceing fixing peoples cars just for the price of the parts in Kaitaia great skills to have
Ka kite Ano
Kia Ora The Am Show.
That's awesome our Taonga Te Kakapo indangered native parrot population has increased to 213 birds this year great mahi.
Its good to see you are concerned about human cause climate change.
Eco Maori sort of knows how some people feel when every conclusion I voice gets spun out to the Matariki.
Its great that Facebook is making changes to stop online extremists haters from using their platforms Ka pai don't give them any oxygen.
Its excellent to see Gull is moving into the South Island that will force the others to lower prices and save our consumers costs considerably kia Ora.
That's the way Customs is stopping more PEE like drugs from getting on New Zealand Street and ultimately destroying people lives.
He waimare etahi taangata He tangata taangata ahu.
Yes Te Kakapu native fish are rear with our degraded Wai quality in our Awa times are changing we are now going to treat our Taonga Wai with the respect it deserves.
Ka pai to Lisa for your massive feat swimming hundreds of miles for your cause Mana Wahine.
Ka kite Ano
We must all make changes to the way we live now as the sooner we act the easier it will be to minimise global warming. The longer we wait the harder it will be to get to a carbon-free society its not ROCKET SCIENCE its logical.
Greta Thunberg to Congress: ‘You’re not trying hard enough. Sorry’
The Swedish environmentalist was one of several who spoke at a Senate climate crisis task force.
At a meeting of the Senate climate crisis task force on Tuesday, lawmakers praised a group of young activists for their leadership, their gumption and their display of wisdom far beyond their years. They then asked the teens for advice on how Congress might combat one of the most urgent and politically contentious threats confronting world leaders: climate change.
Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish activist who has galvanized young people across the world to strike for more action to combat the impact of global warming, politely reminded them that she was a student, not a scientist – or a senator.
“Please save your praise. We don’t want it,” she said. “Don’t invite us here to just tell us how inspiring we are without actually doing anything about it because it doesn’t lead to anything.
The Green New Deal is an ambitious 14-page resolution that calls for a “10-year national mobilization” that would eliminate the nation’s emissions in one decade. Scientists say limiting warming to 1.5C would require cutting manmade carbon levels by 45% by 2030 and reaching net zero around 2050.
Markey said their movement is shifting the political landscape. The senator pointed to the 2020 presidential debates as evidence of what has changed. Candidates are being asked about climate change and pushed to introduce plans to combat global warming. This is in stark contrast to 2016.
“What has happened? You have happened,” he told the activists. “You are giving this extra level of energy to the political process that is absolutely changing the dynamics of politics in the United States Ka kite Ano link below.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/17/greta-thunberg-to-congress-youre-not-trying-hard-enough-sorry
Typical of some business people say one thing in the public EYE and in the board rooms do the opposite what do we call them Lies. If they don't get on the climate mitigation waka they will lose their shoulders CASH. What a lot of business people haven't figured out is clean tech or anything that makes products with low or no carbon footprint is going to be the NEXT GOLD Rush. All the natural materials produced with low or no carbon will have a higher value .
Wall Street investment giants voting against key climate resolutions
Asset management companies BlackRock Inc and Vanguard have failed to live up to pledge to support climate action at energy firms
Some of Wall Street’s largest asset management companies are failing to live up to commitments to use their voting power to fight the climate crisis, according to a new report.
The report, published on Tuesday by the Washington DC-based Majority Action and the Climate Majority Project, claims that BlackRock Inc, the world’s largest asset manager with more than $6tn under management, and Vanguard, with assets of $5.2tn, have voted overwhelmingly against the key climate resolutions at energy companies, including a resolution at ExxonMobil’s annual shareholder meeting, and at Duke Energy.
Had BlackRock and Vanguard not torpedoed these investor efforts, at least 16 climate-critical shareholder resolutions at S&P 500 companies would have received majority support in 2019, representing a significant corporate shift on climate, the report claims.
Refusing to use their proxy votes to support shareholders’ resolutions means letting companies off the hook – even as the climate crisis threatens their investors, their business models and the planet, the group says.
“The climate crisis is well upon us, and leading investors are stepping up to press fossil-fuel-dependent companies to align their strategies to the goals of the Paris agreement but some of the largest US investment companies are severely lagging,” said Majority Action’s Eli Kasargod-Staub.
Majority Action, which delivered a petition of 129,000 petition signatures to Blackrock in April, claims it ranks at the bottom of the list of fund managers using their voting powers to force companies to act responsibly on climate.
Nicholas Eisenberger at the advisory firm Pure Energy Partners said he was encouraged by the growing awareness of the urgency of the climate crisis in the business sector.
“Large asset managers are just at the beginning of taking the urgent actions required to more aggressively confront the threat of climate change,” he said, describing them as battleships at the start of an emergency corrective turn.
“We seen a fundamental shift in the last two years in the understanding of the dangers climate change presents but the steps we’ve taken are nowhere near adequate to the task yet
Ka kite Ano link below.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/17/wall-street-asset-management-climate-change-blackrock-vanguard
Kia Ora Newshub.
Its excellent that Amazon is going to make The Lord Of The Rings TV series in Aotearoa we have A Beautiful Contry and the most environmental way to shear Aotearoa to the Papatuanuku is with Films and TV series.
Brain fart lol
Cool find in North Canterbury a tooth bird 62 million years old birds are beautiful creatures. Aotearoa Te Whenua of ancient birds.
Let's hope not to many Pilot whales get stranded in Te Tai tokorau. Pilot Whales have huge brains and bond with each other quite closely.
Reduce emissions /becoming carbon neutral is definitely great for everyone every living thing.
Ka kite Ano
Kia Ora Te Ao Maori News.
Te Maori King has made the correct call Ka pai
Pilot Whale stranding it cool that heaps of tangata working together to try and save the stranded awesome.
Its sad that tangata whenua of Whangarei is being cut out of there Taonga Wai
Its great that Tangata whenua tourists operator's are chasing more revenue from entertaing our guests. It would be great to see more of our guests experiencing the best place in Aotearoa Te Tairawhiti best hunting fishing first whenua to see Te Ra in Eco Maori view
Isac great innovation finding a valuable oil from industrial hemp teno pai.
Turangi sing to give up smoking anyway you can give the stuff up is cool.
Ka kite Ano