British actor Alan Rickman has died.
At the same age as Bowie, from the same causes.
Rickman was a Labour supporter all his life (he was born, he said, “a card-carrying member of the Labour Party”) – Jeremy Corbyn was one of the first to pay tribute on twitter – and had the enormous courage and integrity to publicly support the Palestinian cause over many years (amongst other things, directing an award-winning play on Rachel Corrie, the young American activist killed by the IDF in the Gaza Strip).
I always remember him in one of his first TV roles as the brilliantly slithery Obadiah Slope – playing alongside Donald Pleasence and Nigel Hawthorne in The Barchester Chronicles – one of the great BBC adaptions of the early 80s.
Alan Rickman showed he cared about Rachel Corrie, killed in a sacrifice performed under the auspices of the Israelis and their anti-Palestine, settlement enforcement policy. Similar I believe to the killing of the Chinese student in Tianneman Square (by I think tanks rolling over him). Rickman and Corrie should both be remembered, perhaps on Anzac Day, as people who served the cause of peace and fairness.
Thanks for that Lanthanide. I didn’t know that and the way that people carry on about Tianneman I thought he must have been killed. I wonder if Amnesty International know what happened to him. I’ll do some searching when I get a chance.
ahhh, well that would never happen in dear ole NZ now. At least that is what Mrs. Tolley and her National Government would let us now. Social Bonds n stuff, and profit of course, so much profit.
More stupidity from a member of the Wellington City Council.
Yesterday I pointed out the fact that the Council was not willing to carry out their responsibilities to the Wellington public by providing an emergency reservoir to ensure that the main hospital had a water supply after an earthquake.
The did have money to indulge themselves in turning over ratepayer money to strengthen a privately owned church.
Mr Lester could be a red-haired frog for all I care. The phrase “left-wing” means very little to me when it is used purely as a criticism of actions rather than a justified indication of where someone sits on the political spectrum.
It is a lesson of sorts to see that you consider the possibility of putting tax-payer money into professional sports to be a confirmation of “left-wing” bias. To me, it is nothing of the sort.
Are we really in a place in NZ, where right-of-centre actions are seen as “left-wing”?
PS. Left you another message on yesterday’s thread this morning, but will repeat it here for ease. Seems relevant in line of this posting, and direction towards myself.
“5 days is time to allow the non-affected regions time to get sorted to help organise continued supplies. Best done by a national body, ie. Ministry of Health. It also provides time to move patients to non-affected areas and other service providers.
In this case, the Ministry is the best suited to create a national framework of identifying supply and external sources for DHB’s around the country in case of an emergency AND acting on that plan when necessary.
National funding for this kind of civil emergency planning is the better option. National planning involves the identification of neighbours who can help, and how that help can be implemented quickly and successfully. This cannot be done by the silo mentality (and local budgets) of local government.”
This is the part of this thread you choose to repeatedly ignore.
I’d be interested to hear why this approach to you is not valid.
I suspect it is because your original premise of non-concern about emergency water supplies was just an excuse to have a dig at “left wing councillors.”.
You appear to be quoting from some document when you talk about “5 days is time …”.
Can you please tell me what that document is? I would like to see what it is that they are talking about? I suspect it may be medicines, bandages etc. I doubt it was talking about the water that the hospital uses in such large amounts.
Wellington Hospital uses 750,000 litres/day. Are we really expected to get that from “neighbours who can help” which appears to mean other DHBs?
That amount of water is 750 metric tonnes or the contents of about 50 road tankers. Given that the roads are going to be impassable after a severe quake the only way to get it is from a large emergency reservoir near the hospital. That is the thing the council is refusing to provide.
A reference to the document please.
Meanwhile do you approve of giving rate payer money to support local, privately owned, professional sports teams?
“You appear to be quoting from some document when you talk about “5 days is time …”.”
Link already provided, relates again to yesterday’s thread.
Primarily, I believe that the Ministry of Health needs to have a plan along with the Ministry of Defence (who is trained in civil emergencies to cope with adverse conditions and failure of infrastructure) to have a plan that evacuates as many patients as possible to neighbouring areas etc, and can provide the emergency supplies that are needed until the situation can be resolved.
But you are once again off on another tangent.
“Meanwhile do you approve of giving rate payer money to support local, privately owned, professional sports teams?
“
So – no – as indicated yesterday, I do not approve of council monies being given to private enterprises that do not improve communities well-being long-term. (This proviso is because I know of many communities groups that are mostly volunteer driven that provide quantifiable “bang for buck” outcomes, and issues like this are often not black and white.)
The question for you is:
Why do you persist in referring to these actions as “left-wing”?
They are not. Regardless of who instigates them.
For example: Saint Sebastian murdering someone is not a saintly murder.
It is a murder committed by a saint.
The actions you describe are right-wing decisions made by purportedly left-wing politicians. But that still does not make them left-wing actions.
(By the way, I would love to call any actions by the existing Nacts “left-wing.” But apparently they just don’t have the compassion, empathy and long-term vision necessary to do any.)
You mean that your quotation is merely quoting from something that you posted yesterday.
It therefore means that it is only your opinion that a DHB needs only 5 days supply of water at a hospital as someone will be able to reconnect the supply after a maximum period of 5 days. Is that really what you are saying?
Do you actually have any professional experience when you come to that conclusion? You certainly appear to be a lone proponent of the opinion. The DHB, and the council certainly don’t seem to agree with you, do they. They seem to be saying it would be months.
You also don’t seem to have any proposals for how you would actually deliver the enormous amount of water do you? Do you actually accept that roads would be impassable?
Meanwhile back to what I have been complaining about. You have said
“But you are once again off on another tangent.”
Me, off on a tangent? My whole point is that I am complaining about our council wasting, or at least proposing to waste, rate payers money on things they shouldn’t be having anything to do with, while not doing the things that are clearly their responsibility.
They don’t have any reason to support professional sports teams.
They don’t have any reason to pay to strengthen buildings they don’t own.
They do have an obligation to guarantee the supply of water to our hospital.
However it is much more fun to go and watch a football match or preen at the reopening of an old church than it is to stand by a reservoir that has been to provide critical insurance for hospital services after an earthquake.
Now, is it true that the 5 days is only your opinion and there is no expert opinion backing it up?
You stated that there existed five days supply and that it was not enough. The article you linked to references that five days.
I queried whether the responsibility past that initial point that you made should in fact lie solely with Wellington City Council.
I said that IMO implementation of a national strategy should have kicked in at that point as the Ministries of both Health and Defence have the capacity to facilitate external agencies to work together to help the afflicted DHB.
“They do have an obligation to guarantee the supply of water to our hospital.”
From what you have referenced – and stated – They already do. And they ensure a supply of five days in case of emergency.
You haven’t yet indicated what you consider a reasonable amount of water supply yourself – or the likely cost of this.
These are salient points.
How much is considered reasonably spent on the possibilities of disaster that could be better spent elsewhere?
You also haven’t addressed the capability of the NZ Defence Force to be utilised effectively in tandem with Ministry of Health, as I have suggested.
In fact, you often seem to reply to your own failure in reading comprehension.
(It has also been noted that you refuse to answer repeated questions about clarity around your own comments. I’m pretty comfortable with disengaging with you if this continues.)
PS. Credit where credit is due. In this comment you actually refrained from referring to right-wing practices as “left-wing”. Well done.
“You stated that there existed five days supply and that it was not enough”
The DHB itself says, in the article I linked to
“Wellington Regional Hospital, which uses 750,000 litres of water a day, has only five days of water in its own reservoir, which could put patients at risk in the event of a major earthquake.
Plans have been in the works to build an emergency 35 million-litre reservoir in Prince of Wales Park since 2003.”
The DHB doesn’t seem to think it is enough if there is an earthquake do they? Bear in mind that the nearest source of supply would be somewhere in the Hutt Valley, all the roads were be severely damaged and the main water supply pipes would be fractured.
You then offer ” They already do. And they ensure a supply of five days in case of emergency.” The council don’t own the reservoir being talked about and don’t ensure the five day supply. It belongs to the hospital and it is intended to handle minor emergencies such as a power outage or a burst water main.
How much is a reasonable amount. The GWRC estimated, in something they published in October last year that
“The estimated restoration times to return bulk water to city reservoirs ranges up to 70 days for the areas furthest from the supply, the eastern and southern suburbs of Wellington.”
If you don’t know Wellington that includes the hospital. That seems a reasonable period to me, unless you plan to move out and abandon the hospital.
Also the Prince of Wales Park referred to is a couple of hundred metres from the hospital. The council said that two thirds of the capacity would be reserved for the hospital.
You then ask “How much is considered reasonably spent on the possibilities of disaster”. I don’t know but building a 35 million litre doesn’t seem to much. As of Jan 2014 the estimate for the reservoir was $20 million.
“You also haven’t addressed the capability of the NZ Defence Force to be utilised effectively in tandem with Ministry of Health, as I have suggested.”
I am quite sure that in the event of an emergency both parties are going to be usefully employed. However they aren’t going to be able to supply water in the quantities needed are they? Where would the get it? Where would they get tankers in the required numbers? How would they move it when the roads will probably be impassable?
Water isn’t like drugs, medical supplies, people or replacement equipment is it? You can’t just stick the quantities required in a helicopter and buzz across the harbour.
The only real proposal available, unless they decide to lay new pipelines under water across the harbour is to go ahead with the planned reservoir. GET ON WITH IT>
We are in agreement that some form of plan is necessary.
We disagree on the onus falling completely on Wellington City Council.
It has taken us many comments to get this far, because of your tendency to divert.
Your original comment yesterday cited two different issues and compared them as if it was one or the other:
ie. $400,000K on a church OR emergency water reservoir for Wellington Hospital (which you have now supplied a budget amount of $20,000,000 for).
That makes your initial implication that councillors are preferring one to the other disingenuous at best.
You conflated this by referring to the action as “left-wing” when it is demonstrably not:
“Meanwhile, in Wellington, the City Council demonstrates what its view of the resident’s interests means.
We agree that some form of action framework and strategy is required.
I tend to suspect that the original reservoir budget you have referenced will likely be overrun, as many public works budgets are. So you are comparing not apples to oranges, but raisins to pumpkins, but for simplicity we will stick to the $20 million start point.
You profess concern over the spending of your rates, which is justified, but seem to throw in red herrings along the way.
The Ministry of Health seems determined to break the backs of DHB’s and local government by demanding more and more for less and less.
The cost of providing health care belongs ultimately to the Ministry, both in terms of ordinary provision – and continued provision in times of emergency.
Your call for local government to provide precautionary additional emergency supplies just takes away that responsibility, and I would rather advocate for a return of that responsibility to the Ministry who is better suited to create a national response that can be called upon at any time by any DHB in the country.
This is likely our only point of disagreement on this issue.
I will continue to support those who advocate for a better national health system for all NZers, and less cost-cutting and shirking of responsibility by the Ministry.
You can start up a petition for local ratepayers to add a $20million + capital expenditure item to the council’s long-term budget. (Now remember there are examples of budget blowouts in excess of 100%, talk to Kaipara residents about that).
My last word on the topic.
If only it was a mere $400,000.
Our council does it regularly and then pretends to be surprised when their projects go bust.
When Zealandia, a bird sanctuary mainly, was built some years ago it never attracted the visitors hoped for. The Trust who ran it managed to get about $17 million, from memory, to build a visitor centre. The councillors pretended to believe that it would improve things and tossed them a $10.3 million interest free loan. It didn’t do any good of course and so the council have had to take over ownership of a white elephant and accept the money was wasted.
The council runs a $10 million dollar slush fund to give to businesses. Nobody, including most of the council seem to know much about its operations. One recipient, a call centre has just gone belly up and taken our money with them.
Some years ago another trust bought and sank an old navy frigate. They got a guarantee for a loan. Of course promises were made that it would never be called on but it was. The frigate then broke up in the first storm. I haven’t heard of anyone who dives to it but the ratepayers were still out of pocket for a good chunk of change.
The council owns a couple of theatres. Again a trust claimed that they would raise all the money for restoring them. They got a loan guarantee for one for, I think $4 million and restored it. Then they only managed to raise $50,000. The council had to cough up the rest of the money.
They are spending some enormous sum in Island Bay on cycle lanes. As far as I, and most of the residents in the area, can see, it will make it incredibly dangerous for pedestrians and people who want to park to shop there. I suppose there are a hundred cyclists who might use it regularly. I suspect their accident rate will go up and they will insist that all parking in the shopping area should be banned.
I could continue to go on but I doubt you want to read any more.
The church and Lester’s ideas about the football club are just this weeks idiocies.
You do say “Your call for local government to provide precautionary additional emergency supplies just takes away that responsibility, and I would rather advocate for a return of that responsibility to the Ministry”
I would suggest to you that it has never been the responsibility of the Health Department and has always been a responsibility of the local body. The council here is just trying to get out of it.
Once again, we would likely be in agreement on most of the items you have claimed. Probably not on cycleways.
I’m glad you are now refraining from referring to this as “left-wing” spending. Funding of private enterprise without wide and long-term social benefit is not and never will be – “left-wing”. This is pure neo-lib access to the public purse via perceived “economic benefits”.
In the past, there were more regional health facilities – but I may be going back further than you due to age. The centralisation of healthcare makes ongoing healthcare due to civil emergencies more vulnerable. Centralisation impacts also in terms of community access and lack of funding going to regions, and as you indicated, the resilience of these systems is reduced when geographical disasters hit the main service centre.
Another issue perhaps.
“I would suggest to you that it has never been the responsibility of the Health Department and has always been a responsibility of the local body. The council here is just trying to get out of it.”
I’m still disagreeing with you here regardless. Your arguments – such as I can ascertain – have not convinced me otherwise. Funding of health care alongside continual reform continues to send our quality of service downhill. Funding of local government also is inadequate, especially in light of the changes that have happened in local government recently.
We have the opportunity to input during the draft Long-Term plans up here in Auckland, which itemise the budgets for Auckland Council for the next ten years. It is reviewed every two years.
I suggest you find out if you have the opportunity to do the same in Wellington, else contact your councillors and advocate the addition of that $20 million because of your concern for emergency provisions for the hospital.
Alwyn
If you want a simple life, retire to a farming town. In cities like Wellington, they need to keep up interest in the place overseas and domestic tourists are drawn to visit there, tourism one of our main urban money earners. The Council can’t guarantee that every thing they invest in pays its way, but it will be part of the attractions held out to the tourists.
The Wellington City Council has other people to think about than crusty old complainers. Yet the rates go up for people on fixed incomes and depreciating ones. How can it be stopped? Maybe it would help if the people who get to be managers stopped paying themselves outlandish salaries. Capped salaries in central and local government to the level of GDP might be a good move, (also politicians). Once gummint reined itself in, shareholders would put pressure on the free-spending entities they invested in.
As for water for the hospital, a while ago the government ran the health system, then as with so many of its duties, it played Maisie the holiday bird and flew away from its responsibilities (Horton and the Egg Dr Seuss – need some levity occasionally). I feel you are right and there should be a reserve adequate for this large hospital, not only for the incumbents, but also to meet the needs of newly injured and sick people after the serious event. But government should bear some of the cost, plus an interest free loan perhaps.
Labour have lost the plot if they support Justin Lester as a ‘left-wing’ mayoral candidate. His background and the issues he has advanced or supported as Deputy Mayor demonstrate that he is the epitome of a crony capitalist. He is in good company with the faux-green anti-democratic current Mayor, the one percenter’s neo-liberal wet dream CEO and the machiavellian PR-meisters that the Council employs.
The Herald pimped for the government’s signing of the TPP yesterday.
‘Editorial: TPP signing an honour, let’s respect it’
The editorial received almost universal opprobrium for its lapdog stance.
136 comments……….,almost all negative, so the Herald put out its ‘Debate on this article is now closed.’
Read some of the comments – it’ll cheer you up
People are wising up to the fact this rag has morphed into a propaganda tabloid.
A petition against New Zealand signing the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement has gathered over 11,000 signatures in just two days.
The Government is denying a date has been set for the signing of the deal despite an official statement by Chile saying it will be done in New Zealand on 4 February.
Barry Coates from the ‘It’s Our Future Coalition’ set up the petition and said he expected more people to sign it.
“If we continue at that rate we’ll be in the hundreds of thousands of signatures. This petition particularly says to the Government ‘don’t sign the TPPA’. It’s a crucial point when our government signs it and we don’t think that they have a mandate to sign the agreement and this petition gives people a chance to say no.”
Barry Coates said the deal was designed to serve the interests of large corporations rather than those of people or the planet.’
The Australians show their fangs again. They called the previous PM the Monk perhaps because he was religiously fervent in his right wing doctrine. On the news is a report that the Oz rejected a NZ offer to take 150 of the Nauru detainees. Abbott thought it would only encourage more to come. Slime, the lot of them. (More reports of more Kiwis picked up and dropped off – the edge of humane conditions.) http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/293947/australia-never-took-nz%27s-refugee-offer Australia never took NZ’s refugee offer – minister
Updated at 4:25 pm on 12 January 2016
The government has told refugees on Nauru who are asking to be resettled in New Zealand that Australia never accepted its offer to take them.
Nauru
Twenty-eight refugees from Nauru have written to Prime Minister John Key seeking resettlement.
Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse received a copy of the letter on 6 January.
But a spokesperson for the Minister said the government offered in 2013 to resettle 150 refugees a year who had been subject to Australia’s offshore processing policy.
The spokesperson said Australia had never taken up the offer, and the places had now been allocated to refugees from the Syrian crisis.
Opposition foreign affairs spokesman David Shearer said the deal was never a good one.
In late 2013, the then Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said New Zealand should not be viewed as a consolation prize by refugees attempting to get to Australia.
And what was in David Shearer’s mind when he said ‘the deal was never a good one’.
Why? Compared to what?
The “deal” was never a good one because it made New Zealand complicit in the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Australian govt.
Abbot received political and diplomatic support for his actions. While John Key got to sell it as “compassionate conservatism” at home.
I wonder if Key knew at the time Abbot was not going to send any refugees over?
Especially given Key doesn’t appear to like refugees.
Hi greywarshark,
Oz, under Liberals are not interested in resettling the asylum seekers at all, their policy is to keep them locked up as a “deterrent” to stop others from coming, cruel and illegal under international law, but it is a big public issue in Oz (made so by Abbott) which saw Abbott elected after promising “to stop the boats”. Interestingly, detainees have spent more time locked up under Turnbull (452 days) than Abbott according to a report released yesterday.
The reasoning for locking them up comes from the Howard era, where the population was led to believe that “arrivals” on boats were the undesirables, thieves and dishonest ones coming to Oz to take advantage, of course, this is not true, those in this classification come to Oz on a holiday by plane and simply never leave, a lot of them on stolen passports.
Last year Interpol released the figures for the number of stolen passports globally and the number is a staggering 39 million.
I personally find the regime highly unethical and an embarrassment to the rest of the world, yet Abbott after being ousted has promoted his ideas at various international functions at the dismay off many.
The ultimate in snobbery: You don’t just go out and buy the damned handbag – you “apply” for one, And likely as not your application will be tuned down if you don’t happen to be one of their approved customers . . .
“Maori youth and children make up 88 per cent of the 317 kids in state care in Northland, and Te Tai Tokerau MP Kelvin Davis says it’s because parents are not doing their job.
“It’s parents not doing their part,” said Mr Davis “They are failing in their roles and there needs to be an intensive intervention in the kids’ lives.” ”
I don’t think that Whanau Ora should be expressed as WO, that is the preserve of WholeOil and I wouldn’t likw to smear that on Whanau Ora.
And it is hard to change ingrained habits that lead from one generation to another of she’ll be right parenting. Perhaps some Whanau Ora camps like Outward Bound where the youngsters get away from home and the groupthink of their peers, and if they can get through Outward Bound they get sent to board and go to secondary at a nearby town if it has a good school standard. Then the kids wouldn’t get pulled down by the constant tug of feckless family and friends. The terrible f’s.
It’s hard to reshape yourself when you’re cut out to be a little gingerbread man but in the children’s story he ran away. The youngster would be close enough so that he/she is in touch and goes home at holidays. That may be the start of a change for many youngsters with good potential.
I think the idea behind Whānau Ora is a good one, but the problem is that it is neither funded nor administered adequately for the job that needs doing.
There are huge problems in Northland with high unemployment, poor housing, and all the health and education problems that go with long term poverty. These problems have definitely been getting worse.
The parents who aren’t looking after their children properly are often just treating them the way that they were treated, and blaming them is not the answer, nor is taking the kids away from them. What is needed is a big investment in local community support, health services and local schools. The Green Party idea of making schools community hubs was a very good one. I hope they will take this policy to the next election and persuade Labour to adopt it as part of a coalition agreement.
Karen
Your knee-jerk reaction of talking about the prescription for a way out of Northland and other impoverished areas problems is nice sounding, but has been heard for years and is definitely only part of the solution. To my suggestion that teenagers should have a sideways shift to a nearby town, as boarders, you say ‘taking the kids away from them’ (the parents). It is a well-used tactic, to give the children a change of company and location when they are teenagers and it works when done properly.
Health services are needed. Local community support yes – and that can take various forms. Local schools: who is teaching, what qualifications and standards, and what is the intended result? Jobs need to be set up for the kids so they can be moving from school to job and back again, so they are integrated right at the beginning. Apprentices used to take time off for a block course. Going from seconday school just means starting with an employer early, going to school for part of the day, working for part of the day. Once the teenagers are integrated, receiving a little pay while they are doing their training, most of them will be set for going on with their skilss to whatever trade or job that interests them.
That is what is needed. Work arranged, projects going on all the time and the organisation and commitment from the local community is what is needed most. Education has meaning and worth when it is applied.
And putting time into maintaining the marae would be a basic also.. As someone was saying on radio recently marae are very expensive to maintain and insure and so on. The young need to support this physical and spiritual base and not just take it and the elders for granted and think that they can be there as a back stop for the young when needed. or when there is a tangi or a meeting. Reciprocal help must be available, It should be regular, and part of the young people’s commitments.
Sorry Greywarshark, I don’t get your claim that my comment to Rosemary was a “kneejerk reaction.” I was explaining why Whānau Ora has not resolved the solutions to the long term problems in Northland, a subject that I do know a reasonable amount.
I wonder how well you know Northland and the communities there. Who are these teenagers going to board with? If you are only talking about teenagers then chances are they have some behavioural problems if they come from a dysfunctional home so finding families to take them on would be extremely difficult.
Which schools in Northland do you think could provide what you envisage? Māori boarding schools like Hato Petera used to provide this but last year they closed their boarding facility because of ongoing issues of bullying and badly maintained accommodation. Efforts are been made to reopen it but seem to have reached a stalemate.
No matter how bad their families are, pre teen kids tend to want to stay with them. Isn’t it better to try and fix the families while investing in local schools and adequately funding community support?
I agree with your ideas about education and work. Unfortunately there are very few jobs available in many areas of Northland. There could be if we had a government that actually cared about creating jobs.
Yes Karen, I was very critical. And everything I suggested seems to receive a negative from you, it can’t be done. And what I fear is the same old anodyne one of families are best and better housing and health will be the answer.
No matter how bad their families are, pre teen kids tend to want to stay with them. Isn’t it better to try and fix the families while investing in local schools and adequately funding community support?…
The parents who aren’t looking after their children properly are often just treating them the way that they were treated, and blaming them is not the answer, nor is taking the kids away from them. What is needed is a big investment in local community support, health services and local schools. The Green Party idea of making schools community hubs was a very good one. I hope they will take this policy to the next election and persuade Labour to adopt it as part of a coalition agreement.
How can anything be achieved you say, when the resources are so bad, the special schools so bad, Putting efforts into the home and parents is vital but takes a long time, and the teenagers need urgent consideration.
If the parents and extended family have some stability and integrity over time good changes can be made. Parents who are unable to cope with life will have little good influence on their children who will identify with their peers, rather than their parents, in the usual teenage way.
When I suggest that teenagers be boarded out and go home in the weekends, it is a circuit breaker. It is not taking them away from their families for ever.
What I suggested could be set up as a pilot, for a few to make it happen if possible for them.. Then if it was successful it would be time to go all out to get it established full time. And at the same time the work for improving the community and working with the parents would progress. Both at the same time. And urgent work to provide opportunities for trade training followed by work.
Greywarshark, I am not being critical of everything you suggest at all. I am pointing out some of the problems with some (not all) of the things you suggest.
Both of our suggestions require a big investment from central government, not just mine. Of course schools need to be much better resourced if they are to become community hubs as suggested by the Green Party.
You seem to be under the illusion that there is a lot more work available in Northland than is the case and you still haven’t explained where these teenagers are going to board. I personally would like to see a boarding school in Northland that could function the way you envisage but it would need a lot of government funding to be established. I would also like to see the government invest in regional development that created work in the area.
I would also like to see the government invest in regional development that created work in the area.
but we know it won’t happen under the Nasties because they they think about the citizens in general ‘f..k ’em’, Gnats don’t want to do most of the things that modern governments have been expected to do. Their gloat is – We got in, you didn’t, so suck on that, and our theatre management is better than yours, enough of the people love our performance to ensure a long run!
And they don’t care about ‘the people’ advancing and bettering themselves, just doing that for their elite group, and the rest are to be managed as efficiently (least money in, sufficient returns out) as possible. End of story, for National.
For Labour, it’s a case of talking big to the comfortably off and waving limp-wristed to their supporters, and pointing to their reps from ‘the people’ doing a scheme here, a scheme there, while need overwhelms them everywhere.
With that in mind, it is important that those wanting to better things start schemes themselves. Small ones, closely monitored for effectiveness, and watched for rorts. Because there is so little happening, each successful scheme will make big waves. Your comment below.
You seem to be under the illusion that there is a lot more work available in Northland than is the case and you still haven’t explained where these teenagers are going to board.
They would board with suitable families, near the schools they attended. These would have to be hand-picked, have good reputations and ethics, and would be drawn from suitable suggestions from marae, family connections, churches, or residents known to be of good character. They would need to be paid weekly board for the time the youngsters were living with them, with enough to cover expenses and include pastoral care, doctor’s visits and so on.
The youngsters would need to behave appropriately, and might need some advice on reasonable and good behaviour, and showing respect and knowing when to accept criticism and what respect should be shown to themselves. They should have an interested, responsible mentor.. Each successful student would be a case for rejoicing, the emphasis would be on incrementally setting up a system that produced thoughtful, smart, strong and kind resilient individuals who would be part of their community, their hapu and marae and role models to others coming forward in their age group.
I am not under any illusions. You will note that I said that jobs need to be found for graduates of trades – they can’t be left with nothing after their efforts. So small intensively run entities tailored to this end have to be set up. They might make simple furniture at competitive prices that get outlets at weekly markets with a couple of responsible adults travelling down in a truck and hocking them off and bringing all the money back, from which a small payment for their efforts, the cost of petrol and truck maintenance would be drawn. The aim would be to make the transactions and cover costs at first. There would be a recognisable brand and the aim would be to build the name, find profitable outlets, openly selling the idea that buying these goods, keeps a good young man or woman in work. They would have to keep tabs on all aspects of the business to ensure that some cousin given the task of being agent and handler of the goods in a distant area, didn’t fall down on the job and set the enterprise back financially and dent its flourishing progress.
This potential progress trust might be able to get advice and assistance from the New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development that Tindall and Hubbard (Cereals) are part of plus many others. They may have ideas on steps to take, which they can make available and also provide mentors.
It requires intensive and committed work and some support from central government with boarding fees, travel costs, and provision for the support network needed, and then real support and contribution from local Councils, many Councillors are negative about the young, and especially Maori. The decline in their lives which has accelerated with the ‘free-for-all market’ and employment has left many Maori with few life options and finding no achievable goal so they just make do as they can. Not long ago I was staying in Northland with some Germans who had come to live in NZ, and spent time learning about tikanga, and the modern culture. They felt where they were living, there was no appetite for change, that the place had accepted the status quo, and lost its mojo. People in positions of leadership were either passive or content to be big frogs in a small puddle. If everything continues as it is, then nothing will change.
And don’t let anyone say that Maori have been given some money so they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They just need to find those bootstraps, and soon they will be making their own, probably better than the ones now presently imported, and then their job will be to sell the idea that supporting NZs making good quality products is more productive for the country, and individual NZ buyers ‘in the longer run’.
Your eluding to the results of the last forty years of the cultural reshaping of NZs history and that starts with the end of the Vietnam war and the debt created by the USA in the Pacific region fueled by capitalist stomping on a socialist democracy in this country and whom have
controlled and continues to control our world, The big 5 eyes
Is it any wonder 88% are Maori in Northland because culturally they have the biggest mountain to climb when it comes to understanding what many pakeha live with as a historical right
Maori are the most underprivileged racial group in NZ which is an extreme paradox considering how much they have contributed to this nation which is a hell of a lot in comparison to their population numbers overall and this country’s politics has always been ignorant of the glaring reality of what is culturally valuable for Maori and forced them to have to fight to get what many pakeha take for granted
So is it any wonder that Kels position is as blatant a bottom line as you can get
When our nation is run by the five eyes and not by majority of NZ citizens you really have to question the overall integrity of our political system and supposed elected representatives
Unfettered capitalism, emergency manager, undermined democratic processes, and not public oversight resulting in ill health and death. But i guess the powers that decide these things don’t have to drink the water. Maybe they should.
. Flint police previously reported a break-in at City Hall, 1101 S. Saginaw St. over the holiday break, but information released Monday, Jan. 11, confirmed the break-in happened at a vacant executive office in the mayor’s suite that contained documents related to the city’s water system.
“The office that was broken into is where some water files are kept,” Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said. “However, at this point it’s hard to tell if any files were taken. The only thing we know for sure was stolen is a TV.”
” The acting deputy head of Russia’s national prison service was arrested for stealing a 50km (30-mile) stretch of road. While serving as prison director in the northern Komi region, Alexander Protopopov is accused of having the highway dismantled, and selling off more than 7,000 concrete slabs. Other prison officials were also involved, prosecutors said.”
How about that for initiative? Anyone living in Auckland who can check whether the Harbour Bridge still has the outside lanes>
Loved the bit about the ‘no class system in NZ and what is that next door…a laundromat or a tradies’ eatery?’
As a frequent laundromat user when travelling (which is often), I had never stopped to think that those with 24/7 access to a washing machine might actually see me as being disadvantaged!
Protect women from a sexual predator? What are you speaking of, don’t you know that it is the women that should prevent themselves from being assaulted and if they fail to do so, surely it must be the women fault for being at the wrong spot and wrong time, dressed incorrectly and maybe sporting a tantalizing ponytail.
If name suppression is lifted then the media will use other photos they have on file. How does having a photo of him in court serve the public interest?
We don’t know at what stage the trial is either. The judge said there was no public interest ‘at present’.
Tauranga actually.
And you would have to live in a very downmarket part of Auckland.
It converts to a very nice, but not Auckland Real Estate, $540,000
He will be doing better then.
I got, from Google rates of about .181 so I rounded to .18
I wonder why they are so different?
Whatever it is still a very nice bit of change isn’t it?
Yes. Have a look at the link in the announcement. It says
“Prize amount: 6 million Swedish krona per prize. The Crafoord Prize in Astronomy is shared equally between the Laureates”.
Incidentally, if you are really interested in his work there is a book which contains the invited lectures from a 2004 Kerr Fest to celebrate his 70th birthday. It is
“The Kerr Spacetime”
Edited by David L Wiltshire, Matt Visser and Susan M Scott.
Published by Cambridge University Press in 2009.
ISBN 978-0-521-88512-6 hardback
I don’t know where you would find a copy in New Zealand, outside a University Library but you are warned.
Don’t bother until you have earned your first class honours degree in either Maths or Theoretical Physics.
“In my entire scientific life, extending over forty-five years, the most shattering experience has been the realization that an exact solution of Einstein’s equations of general relativity, discovered by the New Zealand mathematician, Roy Kerr, provides the absolutely exact representation of untold numbers of massive black holes that populate the universe. This shuddering before the beautiful, this incredible fact that a discovery motivated by a search after the beautiful in mathematics should find its exact replica in Nature, persuades me to say that beauty is that to which the human mind responds at its deepest and most profound.”
Power comes in many forms, both real and illusionary. There is physical power, as personified in a nation that can field vast well-equipped armies and in individuals who have above average physical strength. There is financial power, where some people can simply buy their way in to and out of whatever they want. Finally, there is political power, where someone occupies a position where they can control and direct an organization into carrying out the tasks that they want done.
Power can be both addictive to those who are able to wield it and seductive to others. Women are said to find powerful men highly attractive, and certainly both the Hells Angels motorcycle gang and the US President seldom seem to lack willing and compliant female company.
Within a residential tenancy situation it is usually assumed that the landlord is in a powerful position and the tenant is subservient. Certainly, from the tenant’s point of view, the landlord is able to control many of his actions. Usually the tenant is unable to paint the rooms, change the floor coverings, or alter the garden layout without getting permission from the landlord. The tenant often feels resentful that he is under the thumb of the landlord and paying a sizeable rent each week to someone who appears to be living an affluent and idle life. The Residential Tenancy Act quite openly seeks to remedy the perceived power imbalance by imposing greater penalties and restrictions and longer time requirements on the landlord than it does on the tenant.
However, the perception from the landlords side is quite different. He has handed over access and control of an asset worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars to someone he has only just met and, legally, can only request a bond of usually less than half of one percent of that assets’ value as security. The tenant, should he fall behind on rent payments, cannot be charged any monetary penalty whereas the landlord, should he fail to make his mortgage payments on time, will certainly be charged a hefty penalty by the mortgage holder. He is also well aware that, in practical terms, regardless of the provisions of the tenancy agreement, the tenant can vacate the property whenever they choose leaving the place damaged and full of rubbish knowing that the landlord will receive minimal help from the justice system in enforcing any resultant tribunal orders.
Thus in reality the landlord is not the powerful, almost omnipotent, figure of popular belief. The ability of the landlord to control his property has been sharply reduced by legislation and by the interpretation that public servants have placed on various laws and bylaws based on a blind assumption of excessive landlord power. Even the term ‘Landlord’, which dates back to medieval days when the Lord of the Manor was undisputed master of all he surveyed and the tenants and serfs of his domain were little better than slaves, is now misleading. Although many centuries have now passed and society has vastly changed since those bad old days, many members of the public, the media, and our political masters still have not incorporated these changes into their perception of reality.
Landlords are generally held to be wealthy. Yet in the Auckland market it often costs much less to rent a property than it would to own it. Therefore we have economist Shamubeel Eaqub and other such people on above-average incomes promote the idea that it makes more financial sense to rent than to buy. This may well be true. By renting not buying they would reduce their costs and increase their disposable income and thus would presumably enhance their own enjoyment of life. However, somebody has to own the property that they rent, and this owner will be paying the full costs of ownership. Should they be on the same salary as their tenant they will be subsidizing their tenants living costs and actually have less disposable income than their own tenant. Somebody, somewhere, has to pick up the tab.
Residential tenants and their fellow-travellers have a highly visible adversary – the evil landlord, whereas people who own their own homes do not. Virtually all studies on rental housing problems focus on the plight of the tenants. All tenants are affected by changes and perceived deficiencies in tenancy laws, whereas changes in mortgage rates and availability affect only those home owners who have to renew mortgages at that particular time, a small fraction of the total. Thus it is much easier to organize tenant protests and create sympathy for tenancy problems.
With this undisputed moral high ground, tenants and pro-tenants groups have been able to abuse landlords with apparent impunity. The political world continues to justify this process on the grounds of helping the poor powerless tenants. Sure, we all believe that, in a modern society, poor people should have reasonable access to housing. However we also believe that the poor should not starve but we do not demonize and abuse Countdown and Pak’n’Save. There must be some way that we could provide rental housing to the less fortunate members of our society without violating the rights of another group within our society, residential landlords.
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Simon Clark. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). This year you will be lied to! Simon Clark helps prebunk some misleading statements you'll hear about climate. The video includes ...
It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two speeches delivered by Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at Anzac Day ceremonies in Turkey are the only new posts on the government’s official website since the PM announced his Cabinet shake-up. In one of the speeches, Peters stated the obvious: we live in a troubled ...
1. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
…it has a restricted jurisdiction which must not be abused: it is not an inquisitionNOTE – this article was published before the High Court ruled that Karen Chhour does not have to appear before the Waitangi Tribunal Gary Judd writes – The High Court ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – One of reasons Oranga Tamariki exists is to prevent child neglect. But could the organisation itself be guilty of the same?Oranga Tamariki’s statistics show a decrease in the number and age of children in care. “There are less children ...
David Farrar writes: Graeme Edgeler wrote in 2017: In the first five years after three strikes came into effect 5248 offenders received a ‘first strike’ (that is, a “stage-1 conviction” under the three strikes sentencing regime), and 68 offenders received a ‘second strike’. In the five years prior to ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in politics. That’s refreshing and will be extremely ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the two days to 6:06am on Thursday, April 25:Politics: PM Christopher Luxon has set up a dual standard for ministerial competence by demoting two National Cabinet ministers while leaving also-struggling ...
Hi,Today I mainly want to share some of your thoughts about the recent piece I wrote about success and failure, and the forces that seemingly guide our lives. But first, a quick bit of housekeeping: I am doing a Webworm popup in Los Angeles on Saturday May 11 at 2pm. ...
It is hard to see what Melissa Lee might have done to “save” the media. National went into the election with no public media policy and appears not to have developed one subsequently. Lee claimed that she had prepared a policy paper before the election but it had been decided ...
Open access notablesIce acceleration and rotation in the Greenland Ice Sheet interior in recent decades, Løkkegaard et al., Communications Earth & Environment:In the past two decades, mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet has accelerated, partly due to the speedup of glaciers. However, uncertainty in speed derived from satellite products ...
Buzz from the Beehive A statement from Children’s Minister Karen Chhour – yet to be posted on the Government’s official website – arrived in Point of Order’s email in-tray last night. It welcomes the High Court ruling on whether the Waitangi Tribunal can demand she appear before it. It does ...
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 ...
It's hard times try to make a livingYou wake up every morning in the unforgivingOut there somewhere in the cityThere's people living lives without mercy or pityI feel good, yeah I'm feeling fineI feel better then I have for the longest timeI think these pills have been good for meI ...
In 1974, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Nixon, finding that the President was not a King, but was subject to the law and was required to turn over the evidence of his wrongdoing to the courts. It was a landmark decision for the rule ...
Every day now just seems to bring in more fresh meat for the grinder.In their relentlessly ideological drive to cut back on the “excessive bloat” (as they see it) of the previous Labour-led government, on the mountains of evidence accumulated in such a short period of time do not ...
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Buzz from the Beehive Melissa Lee – as may be discerned from the screenshot above – has not been demoted for doing something seriously wrong as Minister of ...
Morning in London Mother hugs beloved daughter outside the converted shoe factory in which she is living.Afternoon in London Travelling writer takes himself and his wrist down to A&E, just to be sure. Read more ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – The recent announcement of the University Advisory Group, chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman, makes very clear where the Government’s focus and priorities lie. The remit of the Advisory Group is that Group members will consider challenges and opportunities for improvement in the university sector including: ...
Eric Crampton writes – The Reserve Bank of New Zealand desperately wants to find reasons to have workstreams in climate change. It makes little sense. They’ve run another stress test on the banks looking to see if they could find a prudential regulation case. They couldn’t. They ...
Rob MacCullough writes – Pundits from the left and the right are arguing that National’s Fast Track Bill that is designed to speed up infrastructure decisions could end up becoming mired in a cesspool of corruption. Political commentator ...
Looking at the headlines this morning it’s hard to feel anything other than pessimistic about the future of humanity.Note that I’m not speaking about the future of mankind, but the survival of our humanity. The values that we believe in seem to be ebbing away, by the day.Perhaps every generation ...
Swabbing mixed breed baby chicks to test for avian influenzaUh oh. Bird flu – often deadly to humans – is not only being transmitted from infected birds to dairy cows, but is now travelling between dairy cows. As of last Friday, Bloomberg News reports, there were 32 American dairy herds ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
What is it with the mining industry? Its not enough for them to pillage the earth - they apparently can't even be bothered getting resource consent to do so: The proponent behind a major mine near the Clutha River had already been undertaking activity in the area without a ...
Photo # 1 I am a huge fan of Singapore’s approach to housing, as described here two years ago by copying and pasting from The ConversationWhat Singapore has that Australia does not is a public housing developer, the Housing Development Board, which puts new dwellings on public and reclaimed land, ...
Buzz from the Beehive Reactions to news of the government’s readiness to make urgent changes to “the resource management system” through a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) suggest a balanced approach is being taken. The Taxpayers’ Union says the proposed changes don’t go far enough. Greenpeace says ...
I’m starting to wonder if Anna Burns-Francis might be the best political interviewer we’ve got. That might sound unlikely to you, it came as a bit of a surprise to me.Jack Tame can be excellent, but has some pretty average days. I like Rebecca Wright on Newshub, she asks good ...
Chris Trotter writes – Willie Jackson is said to be planning a “media summit” to discuss “the state of the media and how to protect Fourth Estate Journalism”. Not only does the Editor of The Daily Blog, Martyn Bradbury, think this is a good idea, but he has also ...
Graeme Edgeler writes – This morning [April 21], the Wellington High Court is hearing a judicial review brought by Hon. Karen Chhour, the Minister for Children, against a decision of the Waitangi Tribunal. This is unusual, judicial reviews are much more likely to brought against ministers, rather than ...
Both of Parliament’s watchdogs have now ripped into the Government’s Fast-track Approvals Bill. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāMy pick of the six newsey things to know from Aotearoa’s political economy and beyond on the morning of Tuesday, April 23 are:The Lead: The Auditor General,John Ryan, has joined the ...
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The infrastructure industry yesterday issued a “hurry up” message to the Government, telling it to get cracking on developing a pipeline of infrastructure projects.The hiatus around the change of Government has seen some major projects cancelled and others delayed, and there is uncertainty about what will happen with the new ...
Hi,Over the weekend I revisited a podcast I really adore, Dead Eyes. It’s about a guy who got fired from Band of Brothers over two decades ago because Tom Hanks said he had “dead eyes”.If you don’t recall — 2001’s Band of Brothers was part of the emerging trend of ...
Buzz from the Beehive The 180 or so recipients of letters from the Government telling them how to submit infrastructure projects for “fast track” consideration includes some whose project applications previously have been rejected by the courts. News media were quick to feature these in their reports after RMA Reform Minister Chris ...
It would not be a desirable way to start your holiday by breaking your back, your head, or your wrist, but on our first hour in Singapore I gave it a try.We were chatting, last week, before we started a meeting of Hazel’s Enviro Trust, about the things that can ...
Calling all journalists, academics, planners, lawyers, political activists, environmentalists, and other members of the public who believe that the relationships between vested interests and politicians need to be scrutinised. We need to work together to make sure that the new Fast-Track Approvals Bill – currently being pushed through by the ...
Feel worried. Shane Jones and a couple of his Cabinet colleagues are about to be granted the power to override any and all objections to projects like dams, mines, roads etc even if: said projects will harm biodiversity, increase global warming and cause other environmental harms, and even if ...
Bryce Edwards writes- The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. ...
Michael Bassett writes – If you think there is a move afoot by the radical Maori fringe of New Zealand society to create a parallel system of government to the one that we elect at our triennial elections, you aren’t wrong. Over the last few days we have ...
Without a corresponding drop in interest rates, it’s doubtful any changes to the CCCFA will unleash a massive rush of home buyers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The six things that stood out to me in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Monday, April 22 included:The Government making a ...
Sunday was a lazy day. I started watching Jack Tame on Q&A, the interviews are usually good for something to write about. Saying the things that the politicians won’t, but are quite possibly thinking. Things that are true and need to be extracted from between the lines.As you might know ...
In our Weekly Roundup last week we covered news from Auckland Transport that the WX1 Western Express is going to get an upgrade next year with double decker electric buses. As part of the announcement, AT also said “Since we introduced the WX1 Western Express last November we have seen ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 29 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Stats NZ releases its statutory report on Census 2023 tomorrow.Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivers a pre-Budget speech at ...
A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 14, 2024 thru Sat, April 20, 2024. Story of the week Our story of the week hinges on these words from the abstract of a fresh academic ...
The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. The Government says this will ...
This is a column to say thank you. So many of have been in touch since Mum died to say so many kind and thoughtful things. You’re wonderful, all of you. You’ve asked how we’re doing, how Dad’s doing. A little more realisation each day, of the irretrievable finality of ...
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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. ...
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 ...
Refreshed health guidance released today will help parents and schools make informed decisions about whether their child needs to be in school, addressing one of the key issues affecting school attendance, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. In recent years, consistently across all school terms, short-term illness or medical reasons ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is streamlining high-level oceans management while maintaining a focus on supporting the sector’s role in the export-led recovery of the economy. “I am working to realise the untapped potential of our fishing and aquaculture sector. To achieve that we need to be smarter with ...
I was initially resistant to the idea often suggested to me that the Government should deliver an arts strategy. The whole point of the arts and creativity is that people should do whatever the hell they want, unbound by the dictates of politicians in Wellington. Peter Jackson, Kiri Te Kanawa, Eleanor ...
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 ...
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. ...
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 ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A[quiz],DIV[quiz],A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Friday 26 April appeared first on Newsroom. ...
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 ...
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 ...
Asia Pacific Report Chief Mandla Mandela, a member of the National Assembly of South Africa and Nelson Mandela’s grandson, has joined the Freedom Flotilla in istanbul as the ships prepare to sail for Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza. Mandela is also the ambassador for the Global Campaign to Return to ...
Pacific Media Watch Journalists who report on environmental issues are encountering growing difficulties in many parts of the world, reports Reporters Without Borders. According to the tally kept by RSF, 200 journalists have been subjected to threats and physical violence, including murder, in the past 10 years because they were ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards, Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra BagzhanSadvakassov/Upsplash, CC BY-SA Australia’s inflation rate has fallen for the fifth successive quarter, and it’s now less than half of what it was back in late 2022. ...
ACT's Rural Communities and Veterans spokesman Mark Cameron responds to cancellations and protests of ANZAC Day commemorations in Wellington. He says, "These pitiful attempts to detract from ANZAC Day are not at all indicative of the feelings of mainstream ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meighen McCrae, Associate Professor of Strategic & Defence Studies, Australian National University American and Australian stretcher bearers working together near the front line during the Battle of Hamel in 1918.Australian War Memorial While the AUKUS alliance is new, the Australian-American partnership ...
Pōneke based peace activists staged a silent protest at the ANZAC day service to highlight New Zealand’s complicity in war and genocide, and urge the government to take concrete steps to stop the genocide in Palestine. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Magdalena M.E. Bunbury, Postdoctoral Researcher, James Cook University Burial with a horse at the Rákóczifalva site, Hungary (8th century AD).Sándor Hegedűs, Hungarian National Museum, CC BY How do we understand past societies? For centuries, our main sources of information have been ...
Amanda Thompson doesn’t really do Anzac Day. But what she does do is remember the people she knew who had a lifetime to remember stuff they didn’t really want to, because of a war they didn’t ask for. And she does make Anzac biscuits.First published in 2021.All my ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathryn Willis, Postdoctoral Researcher, CSIRO Xavier Boulenger/Shutterstock In the two decades to 2019, global plastic production doubled. By 2040, plastic manufacturing and processing could consume as much as 20% of global oil production and use up 15% of the annual carbon ...
With our collective remembrance, and steadfast belief in our common humanity, we strengthen our hope and resolve to do what we can to foster dialogue and understanding, and to heal divisions in our pursuit of peace. ...
Principal reasons for the opposition is the loss of the public’s democratic right to have “a fair say” and the vital need for a government free from corruption, said Casey Cravens of Dunedin, president of the New Zealand Federation of Freshwater ...
Never mind the scoreboard – in the 2000 Bledisloe Cup decider, the real trans-Tasman battle was won before kickoff.First published in 2016. The dawn of the new millennium was a dark time for the All Blacks. Their final game pre-Y2K was a 22-18 loss to South Africa in the ...
I’m on the wrong side of 40, I never pursued creative work and now my job is killing my soul. Help! Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzDear Hera,May I start with the least original conversation opener you’re likely to hear around the motu at the moment, particularly in Wellington: ...
British actor Alan Rickman has died.
At the same age as Bowie, from the same causes.
Rickman was a Labour supporter all his life (he was born, he said, “a card-carrying member of the Labour Party”) – Jeremy Corbyn was one of the first to pay tribute on twitter – and had the enormous courage and integrity to publicly support the Palestinian cause over many years (amongst other things, directing an award-winning play on Rachel Corrie, the young American activist killed by the IDF in the Gaza Strip).
I always remember him in one of his first TV roles as the brilliantly slithery Obadiah Slope – playing alongside Donald Pleasence and Nigel Hawthorne in The Barchester Chronicles – one of the great BBC adaptions of the early 80s.
yes, its been a tough week for the lovers of art.
Never thought much about the saying bad luck comes in threes but hopefully that’s the last of it
Lemmy, David and Alan.
Already happened.
Well that’s enough for now then
Alan Rickman showed he cared about Rachel Corrie, killed in a sacrifice performed under the auspices of the Israelis and their anti-Palestine, settlement enforcement policy. Similar I believe to the killing of the Chinese student in Tianneman Square (by I think tanks rolling over him). Rickman and Corrie should both be remembered, perhaps on Anzac Day, as people who served the cause of peace and fairness.
The Tiananmen Square Man was not crushed by tanks, but pulled aside by people unknown (possibly the police) and has not been heard from since.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man
Thanks for that Lanthanide. I didn’t know that and the way that people carry on about Tianneman I thought he must have been killed. I wonder if Amnesty International know what happened to him. I’ll do some searching when I get a chance.
He was a pretty hardcase actor. I liked him. RIP
ahhh, well that would never happen in dear ole NZ now. At least that is what Mrs. Tolley and her National Government would let us now. Social Bonds n stuff, and profit of course, so much profit.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/clare-sambrook/g4s-guard-fatally-restrains-15-year-old-gets-promoted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaACiCar9ik
More stupidity from a member of the Wellington City Council.
Yesterday I pointed out the fact that the Council was not willing to carry out their responsibilities to the Wellington public by providing an emergency reservoir to ensure that the main hospital had a water supply after an earthquake.
The did have money to indulge themselves in turning over ratepayer money to strengthen a privately owned church.
Now I see that the deputy Mayor wants the council to help bail out a privately owned football team.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/football/a-league/75903245/wellington-deputy-mayor-justin-lester-in-favour-of-ratepayer-support-for-phoenix
I wonder how many times has been entertained in one of the corporate boxes by the club?
Why doesn’t the council look after its real responsibilities rather than get involved in all the “fun” things that interest them.
And, for Molly if she happens to see this.
I’m afraid Mr Lester is a left-wing councillor. Labour Party supported candidate for Mayor I understand.
Hi Alwyn,
Mr Lester could be a red-haired frog for all I care. The phrase “left-wing” means very little to me when it is used purely as a criticism of actions rather than a justified indication of where someone sits on the political spectrum.
It is a lesson of sorts to see that you consider the possibility of putting tax-payer money into professional sports to be a confirmation of “left-wing” bias. To me, it is nothing of the sort.
Are we really in a place in NZ, where right-of-centre actions are seen as “left-wing”?
PS. Left you another message on yesterday’s thread this morning, but will repeat it here for ease. Seems relevant in line of this posting, and direction towards myself.
You appear to be quoting from some document when you talk about “5 days is time …”.
Can you please tell me what that document is? I would like to see what it is that they are talking about? I suspect it may be medicines, bandages etc. I doubt it was talking about the water that the hospital uses in such large amounts.
Wellington Hospital uses 750,000 litres/day. Are we really expected to get that from “neighbours who can help” which appears to mean other DHBs?
That amount of water is 750 metric tonnes or the contents of about 50 road tankers. Given that the roads are going to be impassable after a severe quake the only way to get it is from a large emergency reservoir near the hospital. That is the thing the council is refusing to provide.
A reference to the document please.
Meanwhile do you approve of giving rate payer money to support local, privately owned, professional sports teams?
“You appear to be quoting from some document when you talk about “5 days is time …”.”
Link already provided, relates again to yesterday’s thread.
Primarily, I believe that the Ministry of Health needs to have a plan along with the Ministry of Defence (who is trained in civil emergencies to cope with adverse conditions and failure of infrastructure) to have a plan that evacuates as many patients as possible to neighbouring areas etc, and can provide the emergency supplies that are needed until the situation can be resolved.
But you are once again off on another tangent.
“Meanwhile do you approve of giving rate payer money to support local, privately owned, professional sports teams?
“
So – no – as indicated yesterday, I do not approve of council monies being given to private enterprises that do not improve communities well-being long-term. (This proviso is because I know of many communities groups that are mostly volunteer driven that provide quantifiable “bang for buck” outcomes, and issues like this are often not black and white.)
The question for you is:
Why do you persist in referring to these actions as “left-wing”?
They are not. Regardless of who instigates them.
For example: Saint Sebastian murdering someone is not a saintly murder.
It is a murder committed by a saint.
The actions you describe are right-wing decisions made by purportedly left-wing politicians. But that still does not make them left-wing actions.
(By the way, I would love to call any actions by the existing Nacts “left-wing.” But apparently they just don’t have the compassion, empathy and long-term vision necessary to do any.)
+1
You mean that your quotation is merely quoting from something that you posted yesterday.
It therefore means that it is only your opinion that a DHB needs only 5 days supply of water at a hospital as someone will be able to reconnect the supply after a maximum period of 5 days. Is that really what you are saying?
Do you actually have any professional experience when you come to that conclusion? You certainly appear to be a lone proponent of the opinion. The DHB, and the council certainly don’t seem to agree with you, do they. They seem to be saying it would be months.
You also don’t seem to have any proposals for how you would actually deliver the enormous amount of water do you? Do you actually accept that roads would be impassable?
Meanwhile back to what I have been complaining about. You have said
“But you are once again off on another tangent.”
Me, off on a tangent? My whole point is that I am complaining about our council wasting, or at least proposing to waste, rate payers money on things they shouldn’t be having anything to do with, while not doing the things that are clearly their responsibility.
They don’t have any reason to support professional sports teams.
They don’t have any reason to pay to strengthen buildings they don’t own.
They do have an obligation to guarantee the supply of water to our hospital.
However it is much more fun to go and watch a football match or preen at the reopening of an old church than it is to stand by a reservoir that has been to provide critical insurance for hospital services after an earthquake.
Now, is it true that the 5 days is only your opinion and there is no expert opinion backing it up?
You stated that there existed five days supply and that it was not enough. The article you linked to references that five days.
I queried whether the responsibility past that initial point that you made should in fact lie solely with Wellington City Council.
I said that IMO implementation of a national strategy should have kicked in at that point as the Ministries of both Health and Defence have the capacity to facilitate external agencies to work together to help the afflicted DHB.
“They do have an obligation to guarantee the supply of water to our hospital.”
From what you have referenced – and stated – They already do. And they ensure a supply of five days in case of emergency.
You haven’t yet indicated what you consider a reasonable amount of water supply yourself – or the likely cost of this.
These are salient points.
How much is considered reasonably spent on the possibilities of disaster that could be better spent elsewhere?
You also haven’t addressed the capability of the NZ Defence Force to be utilised effectively in tandem with Ministry of Health, as I have suggested.
In fact, you often seem to reply to your own failure in reading comprehension.
(It has also been noted that you refuse to answer repeated questions about clarity around your own comments. I’m pretty comfortable with disengaging with you if this continues.)
PS. Credit where credit is due. In this comment you actually refrained from referring to right-wing practices as “left-wing”. Well done.
Ok. Here we go.
“You stated that there existed five days supply and that it was not enough”
The DHB itself says, in the article I linked to
“Wellington Regional Hospital, which uses 750,000 litres of water a day, has only five days of water in its own reservoir, which could put patients at risk in the event of a major earthquake.
Plans have been in the works to build an emergency 35 million-litre reservoir in Prince of Wales Park since 2003.”
The DHB doesn’t seem to think it is enough if there is an earthquake do they? Bear in mind that the nearest source of supply would be somewhere in the Hutt Valley, all the roads were be severely damaged and the main water supply pipes would be fractured.
You then offer ” They already do. And they ensure a supply of five days in case of emergency.” The council don’t own the reservoir being talked about and don’t ensure the five day supply. It belongs to the hospital and it is intended to handle minor emergencies such as a power outage or a burst water main.
How much is a reasonable amount. The GWRC estimated, in something they published in October last year that
“The estimated restoration times to return bulk water to city reservoirs ranges up to 70 days for the areas furthest from the supply, the eastern and southern suburbs of Wellington.”
If you don’t know Wellington that includes the hospital. That seems a reasonable period to me, unless you plan to move out and abandon the hospital.
Also the Prince of Wales Park referred to is a couple of hundred metres from the hospital. The council said that two thirds of the capacity would be reserved for the hospital.
You then ask “How much is considered reasonably spent on the possibilities of disaster”. I don’t know but building a 35 million litre doesn’t seem to much. As of Jan 2014 the estimate for the reservoir was $20 million.
“You also haven’t addressed the capability of the NZ Defence Force to be utilised effectively in tandem with Ministry of Health, as I have suggested.”
I am quite sure that in the event of an emergency both parties are going to be usefully employed. However they aren’t going to be able to supply water in the quantities needed are they? Where would the get it? Where would they get tankers in the required numbers? How would they move it when the roads will probably be impassable?
Water isn’t like drugs, medical supplies, people or replacement equipment is it? You can’t just stick the quantities required in a helicopter and buzz across the harbour.
The only real proposal available, unless they decide to lay new pipelines under water across the harbour is to go ahead with the planned reservoir. GET ON WITH IT>
Right.
We are in agreement that some form of plan is necessary.
We disagree on the onus falling completely on Wellington City Council.
It has taken us many comments to get this far, because of your tendency to divert.
Your original comment yesterday cited two different issues and compared them as if it was one or the other:
ie. $400,000K on a church OR emergency water reservoir for Wellington Hospital (which you have now supplied a budget amount of $20,000,000 for).
That makes your initial implication that councillors are preferring one to the other disingenuous at best.
You conflated this by referring to the action as “left-wing” when it is demonstrably not:
We agree that some form of action framework and strategy is required.
I tend to suspect that the original reservoir budget you have referenced will likely be overrun, as many public works budgets are. So you are comparing not apples to oranges, but raisins to pumpkins, but for simplicity we will stick to the $20 million start point.
You profess concern over the spending of your rates, which is justified, but seem to throw in red herrings along the way.
The Ministry of Health seems determined to break the backs of DHB’s and local government by demanding more and more for less and less.
The cost of providing health care belongs ultimately to the Ministry, both in terms of ordinary provision – and continued provision in times of emergency.
Your call for local government to provide precautionary additional emergency supplies just takes away that responsibility, and I would rather advocate for a return of that responsibility to the Ministry who is better suited to create a national response that can be called upon at any time by any DHB in the country.
This is likely our only point of disagreement on this issue.
I will continue to support those who advocate for a better national health system for all NZers, and less cost-cutting and shirking of responsibility by the Ministry.
You can start up a petition for local ratepayers to add a $20million + capital expenditure item to the council’s long-term budget. (Now remember there are examples of budget blowouts in excess of 100%, talk to Kaipara residents about that).
As I said at the beginning, $400K compared to what you are proposing is pocket change.
My last word on the topic.
If only it was a mere $400,000.
Our council does it regularly and then pretends to be surprised when their projects go bust.
When Zealandia, a bird sanctuary mainly, was built some years ago it never attracted the visitors hoped for. The Trust who ran it managed to get about $17 million, from memory, to build a visitor centre. The councillors pretended to believe that it would improve things and tossed them a $10.3 million interest free loan. It didn’t do any good of course and so the council have had to take over ownership of a white elephant and accept the money was wasted.
The council runs a $10 million dollar slush fund to give to businesses. Nobody, including most of the council seem to know much about its operations. One recipient, a call centre has just gone belly up and taken our money with them.
Some years ago another trust bought and sank an old navy frigate. They got a guarantee for a loan. Of course promises were made that it would never be called on but it was. The frigate then broke up in the first storm. I haven’t heard of anyone who dives to it but the ratepayers were still out of pocket for a good chunk of change.
The council owns a couple of theatres. Again a trust claimed that they would raise all the money for restoring them. They got a loan guarantee for one for, I think $4 million and restored it. Then they only managed to raise $50,000. The council had to cough up the rest of the money.
They are spending some enormous sum in Island Bay on cycle lanes. As far as I, and most of the residents in the area, can see, it will make it incredibly dangerous for pedestrians and people who want to park to shop there. I suppose there are a hundred cyclists who might use it regularly. I suspect their accident rate will go up and they will insist that all parking in the shopping area should be banned.
I could continue to go on but I doubt you want to read any more.
The church and Lester’s ideas about the football club are just this weeks idiocies.
You do say “Your call for local government to provide precautionary additional emergency supplies just takes away that responsibility, and I would rather advocate for a return of that responsibility to the Ministry”
I would suggest to you that it has never been the responsibility of the Health Department and has always been a responsibility of the local body. The council here is just trying to get out of it.
Once again, we would likely be in agreement on most of the items you have claimed. Probably not on cycleways.
I’m glad you are now refraining from referring to this as “left-wing” spending. Funding of private enterprise without wide and long-term social benefit is not and never will be – “left-wing”. This is pure neo-lib access to the public purse via perceived “economic benefits”.
In the past, there were more regional health facilities – but I may be going back further than you due to age. The centralisation of healthcare makes ongoing healthcare due to civil emergencies more vulnerable. Centralisation impacts also in terms of community access and lack of funding going to regions, and as you indicated, the resilience of these systems is reduced when geographical disasters hit the main service centre.
Another issue perhaps.
“I would suggest to you that it has never been the responsibility of the Health Department and has always been a responsibility of the local body. The council here is just trying to get out of it.”
I’m still disagreeing with you here regardless. Your arguments – such as I can ascertain – have not convinced me otherwise. Funding of health care alongside continual reform continues to send our quality of service downhill. Funding of local government also is inadequate, especially in light of the changes that have happened in local government recently.
We have the opportunity to input during the draft Long-Term plans up here in Auckland, which itemise the budgets for Auckland Council for the next ten years. It is reviewed every two years.
I suggest you find out if you have the opportunity to do the same in Wellington, else contact your councillors and advocate the addition of that $20 million because of your concern for emergency provisions for the hospital.
Alwyn
If you want a simple life, retire to a farming town. In cities like Wellington, they need to keep up interest in the place overseas and domestic tourists are drawn to visit there, tourism one of our main urban money earners. The Council can’t guarantee that every thing they invest in pays its way, but it will be part of the attractions held out to the tourists.
The Wellington City Council has other people to think about than crusty old complainers. Yet the rates go up for people on fixed incomes and depreciating ones. How can it be stopped? Maybe it would help if the people who get to be managers stopped paying themselves outlandish salaries. Capped salaries in central and local government to the level of GDP might be a good move, (also politicians). Once gummint reined itself in, shareholders would put pressure on the free-spending entities they invested in.
As for water for the hospital, a while ago the government ran the health system, then as with so many of its duties, it played Maisie the holiday bird and flew away from its responsibilities (Horton and the Egg Dr Seuss – need some levity occasionally). I feel you are right and there should be a reserve adequate for this large hospital, not only for the incumbents, but also to meet the needs of newly injured and sick people after the serious event. But government should bear some of the cost, plus an interest free loan perhaps.
Molly
+1
An intelligent response.
Labour have lost the plot if they support Justin Lester as a ‘left-wing’ mayoral candidate. His background and the issues he has advanced or supported as Deputy Mayor demonstrate that he is the epitome of a crony capitalist. He is in good company with the faux-green anti-democratic current Mayor, the one percenter’s neo-liberal wet dream CEO and the machiavellian PR-meisters that the Council employs.
The Herald pimped for the government’s signing of the TPP yesterday.
‘Editorial: TPP signing an honour, let’s respect it’
The editorial received almost universal opprobrium for its lapdog stance.
136 comments……….,almost all negative, so the Herald put out its ‘Debate on this article is now closed.’
Read some of the comments – it’ll cheer you up
People are wising up to the fact this rag has morphed into a propaganda tabloid.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11573339
and also to cheer you up.
‘TPPA petition gets thousands of signatures
A petition against New Zealand signing the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement has gathered over 11,000 signatures in just two days.
The Government is denying a date has been set for the signing of the deal despite an official statement by Chile saying it will be done in New Zealand on 4 February.
Barry Coates from the ‘It’s Our Future Coalition’ set up the petition and said he expected more people to sign it.
“If we continue at that rate we’ll be in the hundreds of thousands of signatures. This petition particularly says to the Government ‘don’t sign the TPPA’. It’s a crucial point when our government signs it and we don’t think that they have a mandate to sign the agreement and this petition gives people a chance to say no.”
Barry Coates said the deal was designed to serve the interests of large corporations rather than those of people or the planet.’
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/294106/tppa-petition-gets-thousands-of-signatures
I think this is the petition here: http://www.actionstation.org.nz/dontsign
The Australians show their fangs again. They called the previous PM the Monk perhaps because he was religiously fervent in his right wing doctrine. On the news is a report that the Oz rejected a NZ offer to take 150 of the Nauru detainees. Abbott thought it would only encourage more to come. Slime, the lot of them. (More reports of more Kiwis picked up and dropped off – the edge of humane conditions.) http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/293947/australia-never-took-nz%27s-refugee-offer
Australia never took NZ’s refugee offer – minister
Updated at 4:25 pm on 12 January 2016
The government has told refugees on Nauru who are asking to be resettled in New Zealand that Australia never accepted its offer to take them.
Nauru
Twenty-eight refugees from Nauru have written to Prime Minister John Key seeking resettlement.
Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse received a copy of the letter on 6 January.
But a spokesperson for the Minister said the government offered in 2013 to resettle 150 refugees a year who had been subject to Australia’s offshore processing policy.
The spokesperson said Australia had never taken up the offer, and the places had now been allocated to refugees from the Syrian crisis.
Opposition foreign affairs spokesman David Shearer said the deal was never a good one.
In late 2013, the then Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said New Zealand should not be viewed as a consolation prize by refugees attempting to get to Australia.
And what was in David Shearer’s mind when he said ‘the deal was never a good one’.
Why? Compared to what?
Also –
Kiwis being sent to Christmas Island again – detainee
Updated about 1 hour ago
Four New Zealanders are among 10 people who have been sent to Christmas Island from a detention centre on the Australian mainland, RNZ News has been told.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/294122/kiwis-being-sent-to-christmas-island-again-detainee
NZ detainees in Australia struggling to get medicine
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/201785585
The “deal” was never a good one because it made New Zealand complicit in the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Australian govt.
Abbot received political and diplomatic support for his actions. While John Key got to sell it as “compassionate conservatism” at home.
I wonder if Key knew at the time Abbot was not going to send any refugees over?
Especially given Key doesn’t appear to like refugees.
At the time the “deal” looked like a disgrace.
And it’s looking much worse now.
Hi greywarshark,
Oz, under Liberals are not interested in resettling the asylum seekers at all, their policy is to keep them locked up as a “deterrent” to stop others from coming, cruel and illegal under international law, but it is a big public issue in Oz (made so by Abbott) which saw Abbott elected after promising “to stop the boats”. Interestingly, detainees have spent more time locked up under Turnbull (452 days) than Abbott according to a report released yesterday.
The reasoning for locking them up comes from the Howard era, where the population was led to believe that “arrivals” on boats were the undesirables, thieves and dishonest ones coming to Oz to take advantage, of course, this is not true, those in this classification come to Oz on a holiday by plane and simply never leave, a lot of them on stolen passports.
Last year Interpol released the figures for the number of stolen passports globally and the number is a staggering 39 million.
I personally find the regime highly unethical and an embarrassment to the rest of the world, yet Abbott after being ousted has promoted his ideas at various international functions at the dismay off many.
For those masochists amongst us who still prefer investing in the stockmarket:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hermes-bags-investment_5697a827e4b0ce496423521e
and that folks is the kind of mind numbing stupidity that occurs when folk have more money than they know what do with…good grief.
A perfect example of just how stupid the rich are.
Fascinating article; thanks for the link, Ad.
The ultimate in snobbery: You don’t just go out and buy the damned handbag – you “apply” for one, And likely as not your application will be tuned down if you don’t happen to be one of their approved customers . . .
Unbelievable. Just unbelievable.
I suspect Kelvin Davis will cop flak for this…
“Maori youth and children make up 88 per cent of the 317 kids in state care in Northland, and Te Tai Tokerau MP Kelvin Davis says it’s because parents are not doing their job.
“It’s parents not doing their part,” said Mr Davis “They are failing in their roles and there needs to be an intensive intervention in the kids’ lives.” ”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/northern-advocate/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503450&objectid=11574218
I’d like to know what Whanau Ora is doing????
Wasn’t WO set up to sort this shit out?
I don’t think that Whanau Ora should be expressed as WO, that is the preserve of WholeOil and I wouldn’t likw to smear that on Whanau Ora.
And it is hard to change ingrained habits that lead from one generation to another of she’ll be right parenting. Perhaps some Whanau Ora camps like Outward Bound where the youngsters get away from home and the groupthink of their peers, and if they can get through Outward Bound they get sent to board and go to secondary at a nearby town if it has a good school standard. Then the kids wouldn’t get pulled down by the constant tug of feckless family and friends. The terrible f’s.
It’s hard to reshape yourself when you’re cut out to be a little gingerbread man but in the children’s story he ran away. The youngster would be close enough so that he/she is in touch and goes home at holidays. That may be the start of a change for many youngsters with good potential.
I think the idea behind Whānau Ora is a good one, but the problem is that it is neither funded nor administered adequately for the job that needs doing.
There are huge problems in Northland with high unemployment, poor housing, and all the health and education problems that go with long term poverty. These problems have definitely been getting worse.
The parents who aren’t looking after their children properly are often just treating them the way that they were treated, and blaming them is not the answer, nor is taking the kids away from them. What is needed is a big investment in local community support, health services and local schools. The Green Party idea of making schools community hubs was a very good one. I hope they will take this policy to the next election and persuade Labour to adopt it as part of a coalition agreement.
Karen
Your knee-jerk reaction of talking about the prescription for a way out of Northland and other impoverished areas problems is nice sounding, but has been heard for years and is definitely only part of the solution. To my suggestion that teenagers should have a sideways shift to a nearby town, as boarders, you say ‘taking the kids away from them’ (the parents). It is a well-used tactic, to give the children a change of company and location when they are teenagers and it works when done properly.
Health services are needed. Local community support yes – and that can take various forms. Local schools: who is teaching, what qualifications and standards, and what is the intended result? Jobs need to be set up for the kids so they can be moving from school to job and back again, so they are integrated right at the beginning. Apprentices used to take time off for a block course. Going from seconday school just means starting with an employer early, going to school for part of the day, working for part of the day. Once the teenagers are integrated, receiving a little pay while they are doing their training, most of them will be set for going on with their skilss to whatever trade or job that interests them.
That is what is needed. Work arranged, projects going on all the time and the organisation and commitment from the local community is what is needed most. Education has meaning and worth when it is applied.
And putting time into maintaining the marae would be a basic also.. As someone was saying on radio recently marae are very expensive to maintain and insure and so on. The young need to support this physical and spiritual base and not just take it and the elders for granted and think that they can be there as a back stop for the young when needed. or when there is a tangi or a meeting. Reciprocal help must be available, It should be regular, and part of the young people’s commitments.
Sorry Greywarshark, I don’t get your claim that my comment to Rosemary was a “kneejerk reaction.” I was explaining why Whānau Ora has not resolved the solutions to the long term problems in Northland, a subject that I do know a reasonable amount.
I wonder how well you know Northland and the communities there. Who are these teenagers going to board with? If you are only talking about teenagers then chances are they have some behavioural problems if they come from a dysfunctional home so finding families to take them on would be extremely difficult.
Which schools in Northland do you think could provide what you envisage? Māori boarding schools like Hato Petera used to provide this but last year they closed their boarding facility because of ongoing issues of bullying and badly maintained accommodation. Efforts are been made to reopen it but seem to have reached a stalemate.
No matter how bad their families are, pre teen kids tend to want to stay with them. Isn’t it better to try and fix the families while investing in local schools and adequately funding community support?
I agree with your ideas about education and work. Unfortunately there are very few jobs available in many areas of Northland. There could be if we had a government that actually cared about creating jobs.
Yes Karen, I was very critical. And everything I suggested seems to receive a negative from you, it can’t be done. And what I fear is the same old anodyne one of families are best and better housing and health will be the answer.
No matter how bad their families are, pre teen kids tend to want to stay with them. Isn’t it better to try and fix the families while investing in local schools and adequately funding community support?…
The parents who aren’t looking after their children properly are often just treating them the way that they were treated, and blaming them is not the answer, nor is taking the kids away from them. What is needed is a big investment in local community support, health services and local schools. The Green Party idea of making schools community hubs was a very good one. I hope they will take this policy to the next election and persuade Labour to adopt it as part of a coalition agreement.
How can anything be achieved you say, when the resources are so bad, the special schools so bad, Putting efforts into the home and parents is vital but takes a long time, and the teenagers need urgent consideration.
If the parents and extended family have some stability and integrity over time good changes can be made. Parents who are unable to cope with life will have little good influence on their children who will identify with their peers, rather than their parents, in the usual teenage way.
When I suggest that teenagers be boarded out and go home in the weekends, it is a circuit breaker. It is not taking them away from their families for ever.
What I suggested could be set up as a pilot, for a few to make it happen if possible for them.. Then if it was successful it would be time to go all out to get it established full time. And at the same time the work for improving the community and working with the parents would progress. Both at the same time. And urgent work to provide opportunities for trade training followed by work.
Greywarshark, I am not being critical of everything you suggest at all. I am pointing out some of the problems with some (not all) of the things you suggest.
Both of our suggestions require a big investment from central government, not just mine. Of course schools need to be much better resourced if they are to become community hubs as suggested by the Green Party.
You seem to be under the illusion that there is a lot more work available in Northland than is the case and you still haven’t explained where these teenagers are going to board. I personally would like to see a boarding school in Northland that could function the way you envisage but it would need a lot of government funding to be established. I would also like to see the government invest in regional development that created work in the area.
Yes I would like to see this as you suggest –
but we know it won’t happen under the Nasties because they they think about the citizens in general ‘f..k ’em’, Gnats don’t want to do most of the things that modern governments have been expected to do. Their gloat is – We got in, you didn’t, so suck on that, and our theatre management is better than yours, enough of the people love our performance to ensure a long run!
And they don’t care about ‘the people’ advancing and bettering themselves, just doing that for their elite group, and the rest are to be managed as efficiently (least money in, sufficient returns out) as possible. End of story, for National.
For Labour, it’s a case of talking big to the comfortably off and waving limp-wristed to their supporters, and pointing to their reps from ‘the people’ doing a scheme here, a scheme there, while need overwhelms them everywhere.
With that in mind, it is important that those wanting to better things start schemes themselves. Small ones, closely monitored for effectiveness, and watched for rorts. Because there is so little happening, each successful scheme will make big waves. Your comment below.
You seem to be under the illusion that there is a lot more work available in Northland than is the case and you still haven’t explained where these teenagers are going to board.
They would board with suitable families, near the schools they attended. These would have to be hand-picked, have good reputations and ethics, and would be drawn from suitable suggestions from marae, family connections, churches, or residents known to be of good character. They would need to be paid weekly board for the time the youngsters were living with them, with enough to cover expenses and include pastoral care, doctor’s visits and so on.
The youngsters would need to behave appropriately, and might need some advice on reasonable and good behaviour, and showing respect and knowing when to accept criticism and what respect should be shown to themselves. They should have an interested, responsible mentor.. Each successful student would be a case for rejoicing, the emphasis would be on incrementally setting up a system that produced thoughtful, smart, strong and kind resilient individuals who would be part of their community, their hapu and marae and role models to others coming forward in their age group.
I am not under any illusions. You will note that I said that jobs need to be found for graduates of trades – they can’t be left with nothing after their efforts. So small intensively run entities tailored to this end have to be set up. They might make simple furniture at competitive prices that get outlets at weekly markets with a couple of responsible adults travelling down in a truck and hocking them off and bringing all the money back, from which a small payment for their efforts, the cost of petrol and truck maintenance would be drawn. The aim would be to make the transactions and cover costs at first. There would be a recognisable brand and the aim would be to build the name, find profitable outlets, openly selling the idea that buying these goods, keeps a good young man or woman in work. They would have to keep tabs on all aspects of the business to ensure that some cousin given the task of being agent and handler of the goods in a distant area, didn’t fall down on the job and set the enterprise back financially and dent its flourishing progress.
This potential progress trust might be able to get advice and assistance from the New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development that Tindall and Hubbard (Cereals) are part of plus many others. They may have ideas on steps to take, which they can make available and also provide mentors.
It requires intensive and committed work and some support from central government with boarding fees, travel costs, and provision for the support network needed, and then real support and contribution from local Councils, many Councillors are negative about the young, and especially Maori. The decline in their lives which has accelerated with the ‘free-for-all market’ and employment has left many Maori with few life options and finding no achievable goal so they just make do as they can. Not long ago I was staying in Northland with some Germans who had come to live in NZ, and spent time learning about tikanga, and the modern culture. They felt where they were living, there was no appetite for change, that the place had accepted the status quo, and lost its mojo. People in positions of leadership were either passive or content to be big frogs in a small puddle. If everything continues as it is, then nothing will change.
And don’t let anyone say that Maori have been given some money so they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They just need to find those bootstraps, and soon they will be making their own, probably better than the ones now presently imported, and then their job will be to sell the idea that supporting NZs making good quality products is more productive for the country, and individual NZ buyers ‘in the longer run’.
Your eluding to the results of the last forty years of the cultural reshaping of NZs history and that starts with the end of the Vietnam war and the debt created by the USA in the Pacific region fueled by capitalist stomping on a socialist democracy in this country and whom have
controlled and continues to control our world, The big 5 eyes
Is it any wonder 88% are Maori in Northland because culturally they have the biggest mountain to climb when it comes to understanding what many pakeha live with as a historical right
Maori are the most underprivileged racial group in NZ which is an extreme paradox considering how much they have contributed to this nation which is a hell of a lot in comparison to their population numbers overall and this country’s politics has always been ignorant of the glaring reality of what is culturally valuable for Maori and forced them to have to fight to get what many pakeha take for granted
So is it any wonder that Kels position is as blatant a bottom line as you can get
When our nation is run by the five eyes and not by majority of NZ citizens you really have to question the overall integrity of our political system and supposed elected representatives
Flint, the saga that should give us all to think.
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2016/01/13/snyder-flint-area-has-seen-spike-legionnaires/78750610/
Unfettered capitalism, emergency manager, undermined democratic processes, and not public oversight resulting in ill health and death. But i guess the powers that decide these things don’t have to drink the water. Maybe they should.
Willful too – Erin Brockovich in September.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CYZ8xHvUwAQm25a.jpg
https://www.facebook.com/ErinBrockovichOfficial/posts/10156032861665494:0
https://www.facebook.com/ErinBrockovichOfficial/photos/a.10151891381810494.873676.75960805493/10156032861665494/?type=1&theater
Oh yeah..
.
Nurse Ratched
@veggie64_leslie
Arrest him for crimes against humanity
http://usuncut.com/politics/busted-gov-snyder-caught-lying-flint-toxic-water-lead/ …
https://twitter.com/veggie64_leslie/status/688265795034468352
.
Flint police previously reported a break-in at City Hall, 1101 S. Saginaw St. over the holiday break, but information released Monday, Jan. 11, confirmed the break-in happened at a vacant executive office in the mayor’s suite that contained documents related to the city’s water system.
“The office that was broken into is where some water files are kept,” Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said. “However, at this point it’s hard to tell if any files were taken. The only thing we know for sure was stolen is a TV.”
http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2016/01/city_hall_office_containing_wa.html
From the Economist daily news
” The acting deputy head of Russia’s national prison service was arrested for stealing a 50km (30-mile) stretch of road. While serving as prison director in the northern Komi region, Alexander Protopopov is accused of having the highway dismantled, and selling off more than 7,000 concrete slabs. Other prison officials were also involved, prosecutors said.”
How about that for initiative? Anyone living in Auckland who can check whether the Harbour Bridge still has the outside lanes>
brilliant
Kiwis should look at a hole lot of things
http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-holes
Beat me to it Paul….deserves a post of its own.
Loved the bit about the ‘no class system in NZ and what is that next door…a laundromat or a tradies’ eatery?’
As a frequent laundromat user when travelling (which is often), I had never stopped to think that those with 24/7 access to a washing machine might actually see me as being disadvantaged!
The lanes are still there alwyn, but I got a good price for all the nuts and bolts I took off them one night . . . .
I have never mastered the smiley face things.
Consider that I have posted one.
However. You are kidding?……………aren’t you???????
WordPress smilies are here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Smilies
Explanation with table showing what text displays which smilie.
Thank you. I shall see if I can do any better after reading this.
Maybe I have disabled them somehow.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/75928343/judge-denies-picture-application-for-wellknown-new-zealand-actor
I’d suggest there was strong public interest because he’d easily be able to use his celebrity to carry out his actions
Protect women from a sexual predator? What are you speaking of, don’t you know that it is the women that should prevent themselves from being assaulted and if they fail to do so, surely it must be the women fault for being at the wrong spot and wrong time, dressed incorrectly and maybe sporting a tantalizing ponytail.
Trying to figure out whether to be green or BLUE?
Hard one!
If name suppression is lifted then the media will use other photos they have on file. How does having a photo of him in court serve the public interest?
We don’t know at what stage the trial is either. The judge said there was no public interest ‘at present’.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00244-006-0149-5
[lprent: explain why people should be interesting in the link. It is an abstract of
New Analysis of a Rat Feeding Study with a Genetically Modified Maize Reveals Signs of Hepatorenal Toxicity
Next time I see you adding an unexplained link, you are likely to get a ban from the site for wasting my time looking at a probable spammer. ]
Roy Kerr (uc) co winner of Crafoord prize in astronomy.
http://www.crafoordprize.se/press/arkivpressreleases/thecrafoordprizesinmathematicsandastronomy2016.5.76308e0c152098549fa15a0.html
That is really cool. The maths of rotating black holes. The 3 million kroner share of the prize isn’t to be sneezed at either.
Yep not bad. About 3/4 of the price for an average house in Auckland. 🙂
But Roy Kerr is in ChCh 🙂
Tauranga actually.
And you would have to live in a very downmarket part of Auckland.
It converts to a very nice, but not Auckland Real Estate, $540,000
DKK 3,000,000 x .23 = NZD 690,000
He will be doing better then.
I got, from Google rates of about .181 so I rounded to .18
I wonder why they are so different?
Whatever it is still a very nice bit of change isn’t it?
You got the Swedish Krona not the Danish Krone
Yes. Have a look at the link in the announcement. It says
“Prize amount: 6 million Swedish krona per prize. The Crafoord Prize in Astronomy is shared equally between the Laureates”.
My bad. I was fixated on the Danes because I’d come upon discussions about this several times today: http://thestandard.org.nz/gender-pay-gap-average-wage-graph-telling/#comment-1118729
Also I’ll blame lprent’s spelling of krone(r) rather than the Swedish Krona. Always best to deflect the blame.
Incidentally, if you are really interested in his work there is a book which contains the invited lectures from a 2004 Kerr Fest to celebrate his 70th birthday. It is
“The Kerr Spacetime”
Edited by David L Wiltshire, Matt Visser and Susan M Scott.
Published by Cambridge University Press in 2009.
ISBN 978-0-521-88512-6 hardback
I don’t know where you would find a copy in New Zealand, outside a University Library but you are warned.
Don’t bother until you have earned your first class honours degree in either Maths or Theoretical Physics.
Interesting comment by Chandrasekhar in 1975.
“In my entire scientific life, extending over forty-five years, the most shattering experience has been the realization that an exact solution of Einstein’s equations of general relativity, discovered by the New Zealand mathematician, Roy Kerr, provides the absolutely exact representation of untold numbers of massive black holes that populate the universe. This shuddering before the beautiful, this incredible fact that a discovery motivated by a search after the beautiful in mathematics should find its exact replica in Nature, persuades me to say that beauty is that to which the human mind responds at its deepest and most profound.”
http://www2.phys.canterbury.ac.nz/kerrfest/spin.html
Pretty minor, but I guess there is at least another ‘celebrity’ that is against the TPPA.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11573299
SavOur
Who. What? Felix the Cat?
Power comes in many forms, both real and illusionary. There is physical power, as personified in a nation that can field vast well-equipped armies and in individuals who have above average physical strength. There is financial power, where some people can simply buy their way in to and out of whatever they want. Finally, there is political power, where someone occupies a position where they can control and direct an organization into carrying out the tasks that they want done.
Power can be both addictive to those who are able to wield it and seductive to others. Women are said to find powerful men highly attractive, and certainly both the Hells Angels motorcycle gang and the US President seldom seem to lack willing and compliant female company.
Within a residential tenancy situation it is usually assumed that the landlord is in a powerful position and the tenant is subservient. Certainly, from the tenant’s point of view, the landlord is able to control many of his actions. Usually the tenant is unable to paint the rooms, change the floor coverings, or alter the garden layout without getting permission from the landlord. The tenant often feels resentful that he is under the thumb of the landlord and paying a sizeable rent each week to someone who appears to be living an affluent and idle life. The Residential Tenancy Act quite openly seeks to remedy the perceived power imbalance by imposing greater penalties and restrictions and longer time requirements on the landlord than it does on the tenant.
However, the perception from the landlords side is quite different. He has handed over access and control of an asset worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars to someone he has only just met and, legally, can only request a bond of usually less than half of one percent of that assets’ value as security. The tenant, should he fall behind on rent payments, cannot be charged any monetary penalty whereas the landlord, should he fail to make his mortgage payments on time, will certainly be charged a hefty penalty by the mortgage holder. He is also well aware that, in practical terms, regardless of the provisions of the tenancy agreement, the tenant can vacate the property whenever they choose leaving the place damaged and full of rubbish knowing that the landlord will receive minimal help from the justice system in enforcing any resultant tribunal orders.
Thus in reality the landlord is not the powerful, almost omnipotent, figure of popular belief. The ability of the landlord to control his property has been sharply reduced by legislation and by the interpretation that public servants have placed on various laws and bylaws based on a blind assumption of excessive landlord power. Even the term ‘Landlord’, which dates back to medieval days when the Lord of the Manor was undisputed master of all he surveyed and the tenants and serfs of his domain were little better than slaves, is now misleading. Although many centuries have now passed and society has vastly changed since those bad old days, many members of the public, the media, and our political masters still have not incorporated these changes into their perception of reality.
Landlords are generally held to be wealthy. Yet in the Auckland market it often costs much less to rent a property than it would to own it. Therefore we have economist Shamubeel Eaqub and other such people on above-average incomes promote the idea that it makes more financial sense to rent than to buy. This may well be true. By renting not buying they would reduce their costs and increase their disposable income and thus would presumably enhance their own enjoyment of life. However, somebody has to own the property that they rent, and this owner will be paying the full costs of ownership. Should they be on the same salary as their tenant they will be subsidizing their tenants living costs and actually have less disposable income than their own tenant. Somebody, somewhere, has to pick up the tab.
Residential tenants and their fellow-travellers have a highly visible adversary – the evil landlord, whereas people who own their own homes do not. Virtually all studies on rental housing problems focus on the plight of the tenants. All tenants are affected by changes and perceived deficiencies in tenancy laws, whereas changes in mortgage rates and availability affect only those home owners who have to renew mortgages at that particular time, a small fraction of the total. Thus it is much easier to organize tenant protests and create sympathy for tenancy problems.
With this undisputed moral high ground, tenants and pro-tenants groups have been able to abuse landlords with apparent impunity. The political world continues to justify this process on the grounds of helping the poor powerless tenants. Sure, we all believe that, in a modern society, poor people should have reasonable access to housing. However we also believe that the poor should not starve but we do not demonize and abuse Countdown and Pak’n’Save. There must be some way that we could provide rental housing to the less fortunate members of our society without violating the rights of another group within our society, residential landlords.