Oh dear,
This is from our mainstream media Deliberate course set Rena to reef. A sudden deliberate change of course. 33 kph, near top speed to ram it up on the reef.
5 days without intervention, not even the most basic “let’s float some booms around possible leaks” and a massive corexit (8X more toxic than the actual oil dump) on what was a small oil spill at the time.
And the crew flown out of the country “to protect them?”
What is going on here? Here is an interesting 9 minute video explaining the shock doctrine.
John Key’s psychopathy shone through when he made the slash movement and now this?
Apparently, Astrolabe is used as a ‘short-cut’ by many container vessels heading towards Tauranga Port. A forbidden course but one never challenged by authorities. There are rumours currently floating about that Astrolabe is an impediment to the dredging of the harbour floor to allow bigger vessels into the port, and generally as an impediment to the growth of Port business.
If the reef has been significantly compromised by the Rena than the environmental arguments for its ongoing protection as a marine paradise is also significantly compromised.
The whole reason for the transmitting of transponder codes and positions is so that shore authorities know where the ship is. The authorities, who should have been watching, would have been able to pick up the course change, map it onto their own charts, tell that the ship was now headed for a reef and tell the ship to change course. Obviously, this didn’t happen.
Again, this comes down to government not doing enough to ensure the protection of our marine environment.
Good morning. Great to see the Herald articles challenging the pathetic, negligent initial response to the MV Rena disaster… Paul Holmes, John Armstrong and I particularly John Roughan’s take,
as it calls to account the total lack of leadership quality from National’s top politicians. Swift action at the time not explanations and excuses afterwards….shame on you Key, Joyce etc…
The one good thing that may come out of this tragedy is National’s demise.
The simpering Armstrong’s piece needs the common two scans, for it is actually a swingeing defence of ShonKey as per usual with slaps at Labour and Greens. Holmsie can’t resist a swipe at Labour on the way through either. Roughan’s is not bad though.
That these three consistently rat bag journos have given the Nats any stick at all shows what major mismanagement has occured over the Rena disaster.
Then the Herald gets the award for most misleading desperate headline – Key proves popular in Papamoa (actually he gets heckled and grilled by 300 locals)…
Let us hope this is one situation that can’t be sanitised by misleading PR and headlines! Too much in the public eye and hearts? Wonder how the local papers will report it all.
The National Government is enormously popular, partly because Prime Minister John Key and Finance Minister Bill English are willing to throw money at almost every problem.
The latest $18.4 billion deficit represents 9.2 per cent of gross national product – one of the worst amongst the 30 OECD member countries.
The individual tax take has declined from $27.5 billion in the June 2008 year to $23.1 billion in the latest year.
This is mainly because of the Government’s tax cuts last year.
Corporate tax is down from $10.1 billion to $7.3 billion, but GST revenue has risen from $11.1 billion to $13 billion over the same period.
The moneyshot quote from the usually dry and measured Gaynor has to be:
Right-of-centre governments often run large Budget deficits because they overestimate the positive effect of tax cuts on the economy, and the Key Government is no exception.
Stuff and Yahoo website photos of the Rena this morning all feature the Donkey front and centre. Several of them are presented to look like he is running the show.
As an FYI for the Rena discussion this morning, and for those who didn’t catch Joyce on Campbell Live last night, we have another example of failure in ministerial responsibility
…and those who have studied the detail and understand the economics of why it went bad.
They may be a few people in the world who know why the economics went bad. I doubt if a single one of them is an “economist”. If any economist actually knew then it wouldn’t have happened again.
I want to throw in another thought: it could be worse than the 1930s if we let it happen.
Well, he got that bit right.
…(to give you an idea of how, 40,000 of them were state employed actors and theatre directors).
There’s something wrong with having culture?
Like all commenter’s he misses the obvious: Deficit spending is the actual problem with the finance industry. What actually needs to happen is that all people, including countries, who can’t pay back their loans to declare themselves bankrupt and to state, in no unequivocal terms, that the loans will not be paid back. This will destroy a lot of interest bearing debt (that probably didn’t exist before it got printed by the banks) and allow those people and states to start again. Recapitalisation won’t allow that. In fact, recapitalisation only point seems to be to prevent a few people from losing some money rather than to get the “economy” moving again.
Of course, with Peak Everything here, the financial economy is screwed anyway. Already there isn’t enough “value” left in the real economy to pay the monetary debt never mind the usury the capitalists are demanding.
I think my main criticism was that he thinks bank-nationalisation and government control of credit is the “worst” that could happen, currently. A greater danger would seem to be that when debt repudiation starts to become commonplace (i.e. beyond Iceland), wars of conquest will be launched to offset the losses of state-owned creditor banks.
He didn’t come prepared to shovel oil but people on the beach suggested that he shovel some. What was he going to do? Say fuck off, you’re on your own?
Unlike someone else we could both name, it didn’t involve engineering a photo op. There was no tax-payer funded unnecessary helicopter trip involved.
Perhaps if John Key spent less time attending photo-ops, glad-handing the rich and famous (and only listening to what people tell him is going on in his government) and more time in the office ensuring that his ministers were doing their jobs then perhaps we would have a more efficient government, marine compensation legislation would not be shuffled down the list and he would ensure ministers like Joyce would be making sure Maritime NZ was doing its job and not building holiday highway think-big projects and campaigning to to get his boss elected.
If ever Americans were up for a bit of class warfare, now would seem to be the time. The current financial downturn has led to a $700 billion tax-payer-financed bank bailout and an unemployment rate stuck stubbornly above nine percent. Onto this scene has stepped the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, which seeks to bring together a disparate group of protesters united in their belief that the current income distribution is unfair. “The one thing we all have in common is that We are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%,” says their website. In an era of bank bailouts and rising poverty – and where recent data show that the top 1 percent control as much as 35 percent of the total wealth in America – it would appear that the timing of this movement to reconsider the allocation of wealth could not be more perfect.
heh – a wee detail overlooked is that in a world of diminishing returns… standards of living falling in tandem with resource depletion etc…that ‘last place’ might reasonably be concieved as being ahead of the curve 🙂
Nick Smith on The Nation this morning tried very hard to make it look like the government did all that it could from day one of the Rena grounding.
Again, he (and his other Nat pollies) are trying to confuse the issues of the initial response (which is of necessity home-grown, using NZ stores and resources according to advanced planning on a wide range of scenarios) and the work of the salvors which will involve international expertise, the salvors appointed by the owners.
Between the grounding and the work of the salvors and the international experts lies the gap in which New Zealand is on its own and should, MUST, e prepared in every possible way.
That responsibility rests with Maritime NZ. Events and prepared reports that have come to light show that they were not prepared.
It is not good enough for the Gvt to say that there was a problem with the pipes and getting oil off a vessel that is only designed to have oil go on. That is not a new issue! Any person worth their salt would know that in the event of a leaking ship (at sea or in port) would need to have some way of unloading any oil remaining in the ship (broken pipes or not).
That means, we scope the issues, research equipment and techniques on the market, design and build our own if they are not available and we store them. It is inexcusable that and agency charged with the initial response was not better prepared. None of the excuses presented by the government were unforeseeable nor insurmountable with proper planning and provisioning nor was the state of the wreck such that they could not enact a pre-prepared plan.
To say that we do not, nor could we be expected have, the expertise resident in NZ and so we had/have to wait until they arrive is again an attempt for National to confuse in the public mind the initial response and the stage when the salvors arrive. As a principle, we have people being trained every day in first response issues that may be either outside their usual job (eg. an office worker trained in first aid or as a fire warden for their floor of the building) to experts who go overseas or attend courses so they are prepared for a disaster.
All over this country we have full-time or volunteer fire officers who prepare for types of fires, spills etc they may never see in their life time. If the expertise is not local to the fire station then the Fire Service builds that capacity, knowledge and training on a regional or national basis and they practice all sorts of scenarios.
To follow the reasoning of Nick Smith et al what if the emergency initial response people at Auckland airport only prepared for a fire in the terminal? or Only prepared for a runway crash and ignored that they were almost surrounded by water?
NZ is surround by water, we have vessels coming and going, we know the types of fuel they have.
The government is wrong, is lying to us, trying to confuse us and is covering their own political future. We need to not be confused by their obfuscation techniques and as NZdrs who love their country we should stick the issue that “we” (really, the people we paid and trusted to protect us) were not prepared and that will cost us in an environmental cost and hit us again in the pocket!
For every dollar it ultimately costs us to clean this up a worker has to trade time and energy to provide that dollar in taxes. National would rather pay for a $5 plan, leave it to invisible market forces, and irrational belief that business will be responsible and take the risk that it will never have to spend $105 – then tell the poor schmucks who have to pay for it that it was unavoidable, they know better, we are irrational and the lock us out of our beaches!
Well it has long been known to union organisers that some workers exhibit exactly this type of ‘ranking’ behaviour.
The right has historically used all manner of perceived differences (e.g. race, religion, region, rural/urban, employed/unemployed/precariously employed, immigrant/indigenous, low/mid/high earners) to create division among those that in left terms have many commonalities and reasons for uniting.
The Occupy movement has attempted to sweep that tendency away with its one take classification of society into 1 or 99%ers.
Re The Rena and agree wth your comments William Joyce. Maritme NZ are the first responders and should be financed to prepare for the various scenarios and should also develop links with local NZ resources both public and private so that they knew who was out there who could help, instead of ignoring viable offers. In an emergency, mobilising local resources is also something politicians can assist with, if they can be bothered, and clearly NACT can’t be.
On another tack altogether, if we can put a tracking beacon on a penguin, is this done to the containers so that if/when they go overboard they can be located? Not necessarily easy among moving container stacks but there was that fine weather.
Wow Redbaron! Tracking beacon? What a great idea! Indeed why haven’t they?
But I suppose there would have to be a Cabinet Meeting some time in the future and Key would say we have done all that we could, and wasn’t the penguin great and maybe next time, and anyway why didn’t Labour think of it when they were in office? Eh? Ha ha!?
Oh great, so instead of making sure there’s no long term issues with the land freed up, like the high ground water level in Marshlands, or transport system issues the presently cause gridlock every weekday rush hour on main routes into the city from the west and north and ye olde environmental issues, instead Czar Brownlee is over-ruling the Environment Court completely and trying to saturate the market with well over 5 times the number of damaged houses. Perhaps a smarter idea would have been to build a research group to focus purely on what was needed, works in the longterm and fits in with the rest of the rebuild with CERA backing to fast track packets of land for housing, commercial and industrial + all the needed social and economic infrastructure?
Instead of potentially creating a mess of future problems by rubber stamping away…
And I so look forward to potentially loosing all the cheap market gardens and fruit orchards north of me :/
Indeed. What goes around…… Appalling examples of Freedom of speech only for those good Arab folk, not Americans.
Connect this with Bomber Bradbury perhaps? (Good column on Brian Edwards Media.)
Brilliant video. Although we didn’t really need any further confirmation that Obama is every bit the empty vessel we suspected during that insulting “Hope and Change” campaign three years ago and Hillary Clinton is just as callous a liar as her husband.
Whats up with Chris Trotter. He seems to be overwhelemd with his own verbosity. Yesterday he seemed to think that John Kesy was blessed with good luck when all he ever really had was a good wigmaker and now its loose. (old jazz joke). Even the Dompost put him down for being a harbinger of bad luck today. they are not always right but on this one they are.
“I think there has been a shift post-earthquake to lifestyle, particularly in the north of Christchurch where they see themselves as being away from what they may call `earthquake zone’, where there is a perception that it’s more stable land and that’s certainly influencing buyers.”
lolwut?
There’s a complex set of fault systems in North Canterbury that generated all those lovely rolling hills and so it’s definitely not “stable” in all but small human time scales, with multiple, rather visible, surface fault traces if you know what to look for.
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If it is repeated somewhere, don’t miss it.
And isn’t it great where the subject of the interview tells his story rather than being constantly interrupted by the egocentric interviewer, NZ style.
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The next steps in the Government’s ambitious firearms reform programme to include a three-month buy-back have been announced by Police Minister Poto Williams today. “The last buy-back and amnesty was unprecedented for New Zealand and was successful in collecting 60,297 firearms, modifying a further 5,630 firearms, and collecting 299,837 prohibited ...
Upscaling work already underway to restore two iconic ecosystems will deliver jobs and a lasting legacy, Conservation Minister Kiri Allan says. “The Jobs for Nature programme provides $1.25 billion over four years to offer employment opportunities for people whose livelihoods have been impacted by the COVID-19 recession. “Two new projects ...
The Government has released its Public Housing Plan 2021-2024 which outlines the intention of where 8,000 additional public and transitional housing places announced in Budget 2020, will go. “The Government is committed to continuing its public house build programme at pace and scale. The extra 8,000 homes – 6000 public ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has congratulated President Joe Biden on his inauguration as the 46th President of the United States of America. “I look forward to building a close relationship with President Biden and working with him on issues that matter to both our countries,” Jacinda Ardern said. “New Zealand ...
A major investment to tackle wilding pines in Mt Richmond will create jobs and help protect the area’s unique ecosystems, Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor says. The Mt Richmond Forest Park has unique ecosystems developed on mineral-rich geology, including taonga plant species found nowhere else in the country. “These special plant ...
To further protect New Zealand from COVID-19, the Government is extending pre-departure testing to all passengers to New Zealand except from Australia, Antarctica and most Pacific Islands, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “The change will come into force for all flights arriving in New Zealand after 11:59pm (NZT) on Monday ...
Bay Conservation Cadets launched with first intake Supported with $3.5 million grant Part of $1.245b Jobs for Nature programme to accelerate recover from Covid Cadets will learn skills to protect and enhance environment Environment Minister David Parker today welcomed the first intake of cadets at the launch of the Bay ...
The Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern and the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Mark Brown have announced passengers from the Cook Islands can resume quarantine-free travel into New Zealand from 21 January, enabling access to essential services such as health. “Following confirmation of the Cook Islands’ COVID ...
Jobs for Nature funding is being made available to conservation groups and landowners to employ staff and contractors in a move aimed at boosting local biodiversity-focused projects, Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan has announced. It is estimated some 400-plus jobs will be created with employment opportunities in ecology, restoration, trapping, ...
The Government has approved an exception class for 1000 international tertiary students, degree level and above, who began their study in New Zealand but were caught offshore when border restrictions began. The exception will allow students to return to New Zealand in stages from April 2021. “Our top priority continues ...
Today’s deal between Meridian and Rio Tinto for the Tiwai smelter to remain open another four years provides time for a managed transition for Southland. “The deal provides welcome certainty to the Southland community by protecting jobs and incomes as the region plans for the future. The Government is committed ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has appointed Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). The leader of each APEC economy appoints three private sector representatives to ABAC. ABAC provides advice to leaders annually on business priorities. “ABAC helps ensure that APEC’s work programme is informed by business community perspectives ...
The Government’s prudent fiscal management and strong policy programme in the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic have been acknowledged by the credit rating agency Fitch. Fitch has today affirmed New Zealand’s local currency rating at AA+ with a stable outlook and foreign currency rating at AA with a positive ...
The Government is putting in place a suite of additional actions to protect New Zealand from COVID-19, including new emerging variants, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “Given the high rates of infection in many countries and evidence of the global spread of more transmissible variants, it’s clear that ...
$36 million of Government funding alongside councils and others for 19 projects Investment will clean up and protect waterways and create local jobs Boots on the ground expected in Q2 of 2021 Funding part of the Jobs for Nature policy package A package of 19 projects will help clean up ...
Today, for the second time in two months Dunedin climate protectors have locked themselves to the railway tracks outside the Dunedin Railway station to stop the KiwiRail coal train from Bathurst Resources’ Takitimu mine in Southland to Fonterra’s ...
KiwiRail STOP Hauling COAL Today, for the second time in two months Dunedin climate protectors have locked themselves to the railway tracks outside the Dunedin Railway station to stop the KiwiRail coal train from Bathurst Resources’ Takitimu mine ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Dunn, Associate professor, University of Sydney The government is rolling out a new public information campaign this week to reassure the public about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, which one expert has said “couldn’t be more crucial” to people actually getting ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Therese O’Sullivan, Associate Professor, Edith Cowan University The COVID vaccine rollout has placed the issue of vaccination firmly in the spotlight. A successful rollout will depend on a variety of factors, one of which is vaccine acceptance. One potential hurdle to vaccine ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bernard Walker, Associate Professor in Organisations and Leadership, University of Canterbury Kiwis know what it’s like when life throws curveballs. We’ve had major quakes, floods, fires, an eruption, a terrorist attack and now a pandemic. In those situations, it’s the ability to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Irwin, Emeritus professor, Murdoch University While we continue to be occupied with the COVID pandemic, another life-threatening disease has emerged in northern Australia, one that’s cause for considerable alarm for the millions of dog owners around the country. This disease — ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cath Ferguson, Academic, Edith Cowan University Almost half of Australian adults struggle with reading. Similar levels of struggling readers are reported in the United Kingdom and United States. This does not mean all struggling readers are illiterate. It means they often struggle ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Abbas Shieh, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Design, Islamic Azad University The industrial revolution transformed cities, resulting in places of residence and work becoming more distant than ever before. This spatial segregation is still largely embedded in the design of our ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia Review: Occupation: Rainfall, written and directed by Luke Sparke Historically, when a sequel to a film was greenlit, you could rest assured this was because the first film made a ...
Welcome to The Spinoff’s live updates for January 28, keeping you up to date with the latest local and international news. Reach me on stewart@thespinoff.co.nzOur members make The Spinoff happen! Every dollar contributed directly funds our editorial team – click here to learn more about how you can support us ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Tourism suffers in the shadow of Covid-19, two new positive cases in Auckland confirmed, and National will contest the Māori electorates.The front page of the January 4 Greymouth Star carried grim tidings for several of the glacier towns on the ...
*This article first appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission. Two people who left managed isolation on January 15 have been confirmed as positive Covid-19 cases, with the Ministry of Health urging anyone who visited the same locations during the same time period as the infected pair in Auckland to ...
The watchlist of 'offensive or unreasonable' babies' names is to be reviewed, to include more names from other languages. Generations of the Īhaka family have played a meaningful role in bringing Te Reo and stories of Māori to our wider community. Archdeacon Sir Kīngi Matutaera Īhaka (Te Aupōuri, 1921-93) was known as the orator of ...
After Morocco’s flagrant violation of the terms of the ceasefire in Western Sahara on Friday 13 November 2020 war broke out between the two sides. In the midst of this war Tauranga based Ballance Agri-Nutrients has decided to carry on importing phosphate ...
Nicholas Agar suggests that our handling of the pandemic could be partly down to our distinctive Treaty of Waitangi relationship, and Māori ideas that enabled us to make it through without tens of thousands of deaths A mission for universities in the coming decade will be a deep understanding of the meaning ...
A young girl who once sent $5 to an embattled America's Cup team is now among the women on the water helping run the contest for the Auld Mug. As an eager and generous nine-year-old, Melanie Roberts posted a letter, with a $5 note, to OneAustralia’s America’s Cup team. It was 1995, ...
At 5am today, cock’s crow, the embargo lifted on the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards longlist. Here are the books in the race, followed by thoughts from poetry editor Chris Tse and books editor Catherine Woulfe. A shortlist of four books in each category will be announced March 3, with ...
Ignoring those QR codes when you drop into the supermarket? Can’t be bothered when you grab a coffee? The people serving you notice, and you’re freaking them out.So far, New Zealanders’ use of the Covid-19 Tracer app has been notably woeful. Food industry workers who’ve watched streams of customers walk ...
Steve Braunias reveals the longlist of the 2021 Ockham New Zealand book awards Apart from one or two unfortunate omissions which cast doubt on the sanity and intellectual acumen of judges, especially the nobodies who judged this year's non-fiction, the longlist for the 2021 Ockham New Zealand book awards is ...
By Lulu Mark in Port Moresby Papua New Guinea’s biggest hospital is straining to provide medical services to the growing population of the capital Port Moresby – with an estimated growth rate of 3 percent annually, a medical executive says. Port Moresby General Hospital chief executive officer Dr Paki Molumi ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Nationals who attend Thursday’s memorial service in Tweed Heads for Doug Anthony, who died last month aged 90, may muse on the contrast between the state of their party when he led it and now. ...
Returning to quarantine-free travel in 2021 doesn't just need a vaccine, but a way to check whether arriving passengers are actually immune to the virus. A smart Kiwi science start-up is working with a global biometrics giant to make that happen. A deal signed between Kiwi research and development company Orbis Diagnostics, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caitlyn Forster, PhD Candidate, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney This summer’s wetter conditions have created great conditions for flowering plants. Flowers provide sweet nectar and protein-rich pollen, attracting many insects, including bees. Commercial honey bees are also thriving: ...
Lotto scratchie tickets featuring the pop band Six60 are being withdrawn after a public backlash. In a statement, Lotto NZ said there had been a mutual decision made with the band to remove the tickets from sale following the negative feedback, and it offered an apology. The band faced criticism, both ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Russell Dean Christopher Bicknell, Post-doctoral researcher in Palaeobiology , University of New England Shell-crushing predation was already in full swing half a billion years ago, as our new research published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B reveals. A hyena devouring ...
Vodafone has suspended advertising on the radio station amid calls for talkback host John Banks to be taken off air after yet another racist outburst. Alex Braae reports. In an alarming segment of talkback radio, former Auckland mayor John Banks endorsed the views of a caller who described Māori as a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Welch, Senior Lecturer, University of Auckland When a COVID-19 case was found in Northland last Sunday, Aotearoa’s second-longest period with no detected community case came to an end. ESR scientists worked late into Sunday night to obtain a whole genome sequence ...
He has the perfect moustache, an exceptional mullet, and he uses terms like ‘face hole’ on national TV. Who or what is Dr Joel Rindelaub?I was drawn in by the moustache, but it was the mullet that really kept me there. Watching TVNZ’s Breakfast yesterday morning I was fixated. Often, ...
We’ll never be royals with nearly a quarter of declined baby names featuring “Royal” in some form or another. Te Tari Taiwhenua Department of Internal Affairs has released the list of names declined in 2020 by the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and ...
After a raft of inquiries delving into and recommending what should be done about the politically beleaguered Orangi Tamaraki, along with the briefing papers we suppose he has been given, we imagined Children’s Minister Kelvin Davis would have no more need for expert advice. Wrong. He has ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vincent Ho, Senior Lecturer and clinical academic gastroenterologist, Western Sydney University There’s a common assumption men take longer than women to poo. People say so on Twitter, in memes, and elsewhereonline. But is that right? What could explain it? And if ...
Just as sexuality is a spectrum, so too is asexuality. In Ace of Hearts, members of New Zealand’s asexual community talk about the challenges and misconceptions of identifying as ace.First published November 17, 2020.Ace of Hearts is part of Frame, a series of short documentaries produced by Wrestler for The Spinoff.“A ...
Sam Brooks wasn’t allowed to watch kids TV as a kid. Now, as a 30 year old man, he watches it for the first time.My mother’s approach to parenting was unorthodox. I wrote weekly book reports on top of my actual homework, I did maths equations in Roman numerals and ...
Pacific Media Watch newsdesk More leading Indonesian figures have made racial slurs against Natalius Pigai, former chair of the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) – and all West Papuans, says United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) interim president Benny Wenda. “Since the illegal Indonesian invasion in 1963, Indonesian ...
“The Government’s failure to even conduct a standard cost-benefit analysis for the most expensive infrastructure project in New Zealand’s history is mind-bogglingly arrogant,” says New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke. “A ...
The Ministry of Health is today drawing backlash from the local New Zealand vaping industry following its release of proposed regulations for the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Act. Vaping Trade Association New Zealand (VTANZ) President, ...
Sophie Gilmour and Simon Day are joined by special guest Hugo Baird, co-owner of Grey Lynn’s Honey Bones and Lilian, to talk about opening new pub Hotel Ponsonby.Auckland is a city of many bars but few really good pubs – the kind of places you’d be just as comfortable going ...
The appointment of an advisory board for Oranga Tamariki is welcome and should be a step toward a total transformation of the care and protection system to a by Māori, for Māori approach, Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft said today. Minister ...
Taking control of your financial wellbeing can have cascading positive impacts for your life and it can also be fun. With the help of the team at Kiwi Wealth, we’ve compiled some simple tricks for balancing your books in 2021. There’s something about the beginning of a new year, especially after ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kris Gledhill, Professor of Law, Auckland University of Technology As we know, getting into New Zealand during the COVID-19 pandemic is difficult. There are practicalities, such as high airfare and managed isolation costs. And there are legal requirements, including pre-flight testing, mandatory ...
New Zealand faces the risk of a generation being locked out of the housing market unless land is freed up and more houses built, National Party leader Judith Collins says. ...
On Sunday, Stuff published a months-long investigation by Alison Mau detailing allegations of harassment and exploitation within the local music industry.The piece, ‘Music industry professionals demand change after speaking out about its dark side’, includes allegations of inappropriate behaviour and abuse of power by male artists, international acts and executives; ...
“The Government is all at sea on timelines for Australia and New Zealand’s respective vaccine roll-outs, with the worst news coming from the mouth of Pfizer Australia CEO Anne Harris,” says ACT Leader David Seymour. “Yesterday, under increasing ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Higgins, Senior Research Fellow, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden promised the US would demonstrate “global leadership on refugees”. Once elected, he pledged to vastly increase refugee resettlement in the US. If history is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Baumann, Casual Academic, School of Social Sciences & Psychology, Western Sydney University Among the many hard truths exposed by COVID-19 is the huge disparity between the world’s rich and poor. As economies went into freefall, the world’s billionaires increased their already ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jan Lanicek, Senior Lecturer in Modern European History and Jewish History, UNSW On January 27 communities worldwide commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz — the largest complex of concentration camps and extermination centres during the Holocaust. This is the first year the International ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lorinda Cramer, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Australian Catholic University The summer break is over, marking a return to the office. For some, this ends almost a year of working from home in lockdown. Some analysts are predicting it might also mark an enduring ...
Welcome to The Spinoff’s live updates for January 27, keeping you up to date with the latest local and international news. Reach me on stewart@thespinoff.co.nzOur members make The Spinoff happen! Every dollar contributed directly funds our editorial team – click here to learn more about how you can support us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato New Zealand has a strong history of protecting and promoting human rights at home and internationally, and prides itself on being an outspoken critic and global leader in this area. So, when the most ...
Good morning and welcome to the Bulletin. In today’s edition: Collins outlines the plan forward for National, no spread of Covid spotted yet in Northland, and students return for climate protest.In front of a Rotary Club at the Ellerslie Racecourse in Auckland, National leader Judith Collins yesterday set out her ...
*This articlefirst appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission. The tourism industry isn't holding its breath for a trans-Tasman travel bubble being in place after Australia temporarily closed its borders to New Zealand. New Zealanders could be waiting even longer for a full trans-Tasman bubble, with the ...
We continue our week-long examination of New Zealand writer Roderick Finlayson with an essay by Anahera Gildea on cultural appropriation Every night at 7pm sharp, my Irish Catholic father and his eight siblings would have to kneel on the carpet of the living room, facing the freshly polished nudity of ...
A Covid reset will force costly and inflexible cities to take a hard look at their planning systems, or people will vote with their feet. Broken urban planning systems make for misery even in the best of times. If land use and housing regulations prevent metropolitan areas from growing up or out as ...
Children's Minister Kelvin Davis will have independent eyes and ears across Oranga Tamariki over the next five months as the Government tries to change the work and practices of the ministry. The Government has created a Māori-led watchdog to oversee how the children's ministry, Oranga Tamariki, deals with parents and ...
When an Auckland school classroom went up in flames in December last year, exploding asbestos over neighbouring houses, five separate government agencies were involved. Yet stressed residents dealing with the aftermath on their homes say the response felt chaotic and uncoordinated; even local MPs who got involved couldn't get the information they wanted. Hundreds of thousands of ...
The pandemic has accelerated the trend of doing our banking online instead of in person. This rapid digital embrace has, in turn, sped up the closure of many smaller bank branches. But, as Mark Jennings writes, there are new branches springing up with a different look and purpose. Auckland’s Wynyard ...
Corrina Gage has represented New Zealand in a trio of water sports. But it's her love for waka ama - and the opportunities it gives paddlers from 5 to 85 - that keeps her racing and coaching around the world. Lake Karāpiro is quiet and still now. But last week, it was all noise ...
Telling a Rotary Club audience that housing is a serious problem and they should care deeply about it landed flat but took some daring from the National leader, writes Justin Giovannetti.Judith Collins’ level of control over the National Party is still a question best answered by a shrug.Elevated to her ...
A gang turf war gripped the South Auckland suburb in late 2020, forcing schools to lock down and armed police to patrol the streets. Community leaders are now warning the cycle of violent retribution could continue in 2021, unless radical interventions are made.The violent altercations that loomed large in Ōtara ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Véronique Duché, A.R. Chisholm Professor of French, University of Melbourne In this series, writers pay tribute to fictional detectives on the page and on screen. When I first heard that Rowan Atkinson was to put on Maigret’s velvet-collared overcoat, I wondered ...
Oh dear,
This is from our mainstream media Deliberate course set Rena to reef. A sudden deliberate change of course. 33 kph, near top speed to ram it up on the reef.
5 days without intervention, not even the most basic “let’s float some booms around possible leaks” and a massive corexit (8X more toxic than the actual oil dump) on what was a small oil spill at the time.
And the crew flown out of the country “to protect them?”
What is going on here? Here is an interesting 9 minute video explaining the shock doctrine.
John Key’s psychopathy shone through when he made the slash movement and now this?
15 October 2011 at 7:23 am
Oh dear,
Do you think the #bryceedwardsconspiracy might be behind it all?
Kia-ora Travellerev
Apparently, Astrolabe is used as a ‘short-cut’ by many container vessels heading towards Tauranga Port. A forbidden course but one never challenged by authorities. There are rumours currently floating about that Astrolabe is an impediment to the dredging of the harbour floor to allow bigger vessels into the port, and generally as an impediment to the growth of Port business.
If the reef has been significantly compromised by the Rena than the environmental arguments for its ongoing protection as a marine paradise is also significantly compromised.
Sounds like a good reason to damage the reef to me!
The whole reason for the transmitting of transponder codes and positions is so that shore authorities know where the ship is. The authorities, who should have been watching, would have been able to pick up the course change, map it onto their own charts, tell that the ship was now headed for a reef and tell the ship to change course. Obviously, this didn’t happen.
Again, this comes down to government not doing enough to ensure the protection of our marine environment.
Or a government needing a pristine reef out of the way for expansion and diversion.
Good morning. Great to see the Herald articles challenging the pathetic, negligent initial response to the MV Rena disaster… Paul Holmes, John Armstrong and I particularly John Roughan’s take,
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10759123
as it calls to account the total lack of leadership quality from National’s top politicians. Swift action at the time not explanations and excuses afterwards….shame on you Key, Joyce etc…
The one good thing that may come out of this tragedy is National’s demise.
The simpering Armstrong’s piece needs the common two scans, for it is actually a swingeing defence of ShonKey as per usual with slaps at Labour and Greens. Holmsie can’t resist a swipe at Labour on the way through either. Roughan’s is not bad though.
That these three consistently rat bag journos have given the Nats any stick at all shows what major mismanagement has occured over the Rena disaster.
Also worth a read is today’s editoral titled “Key’s second-hand S&P tattle is not good enough”.
Pleased to see that this serious issue has not been completely consigned to oblivion in the wake of the Rena disaster.
{Note to self: must read the instructions of how to include a link and learn how to do this.]
Then the Herald gets the award for most misleading desperate headline – Key proves popular in Papamoa (actually he gets heckled and grilled by 300 locals)…
http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-stories/10472770/key-proves-popular-in-papamoa/
Let us hope this is one situation that can’t be sanitised by misleading PR and headlines! Too much in the public eye and hearts? Wonder how the local papers will report it all.
From domPost
Rena course ‘deliberate’
That could read Key Govt course ‘deliberate’
Gaynor in the Hearld
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/personal-finance/news/article.cfm?c_id=12&objectid=10759132
The National Government is enormously popular, partly because Prime Minister John Key and Finance Minister Bill English are willing to throw money at almost every problem.
The latest $18.4 billion deficit represents 9.2 per cent of gross national product – one of the worst amongst the 30 OECD member countries.
The individual tax take has declined from $27.5 billion in the June 2008 year to $23.1 billion in the latest year.
This is mainly because of the Government’s tax cuts last year.
Corporate tax is down from $10.1 billion to $7.3 billion, but GST revenue has risen from $11.1 billion to $13 billion over the same period.
The Gaynor article is well worth a read.
The moneyshot quote from the usually dry and measured Gaynor has to be:
That’s because the RWNJs always predict the positive effect through ideology rather than reality.
Stuff and Yahoo website photos of the Rena this morning all feature the Donkey front and centre. Several of them are presented to look like he is running the show.
As an FYI for the Rena discussion this morning, and for those who didn’t catch Joyce on Campbell Live last night, we have another example of failure in ministerial responsibility
An interesting article on how the current world financial crisis differs from that of the 1930s.
They may be a few people in the world who know why the economics went bad. I doubt if a single one of them is an “economist”. If any economist actually knew then it wouldn’t have happened again.
Well, he got that bit right.
There’s something wrong with having culture?
Like all commenter’s he misses the obvious: Deficit spending is the actual problem with the finance industry. What actually needs to happen is that all people, including countries, who can’t pay back their loans to declare themselves bankrupt and to state, in no unequivocal terms, that the loans will not be paid back. This will destroy a lot of interest bearing debt (that probably didn’t exist before it got printed by the banks) and allow those people and states to start again. Recapitalisation won’t allow that. In fact, recapitalisation only point seems to be to prevent a few people from losing some money rather than to get the “economy” moving again.
Of course, with Peak Everything here, the financial economy is screwed anyway. Already there isn’t enough “value” left in the real economy to pay the monetary debt never mind the usury the capitalists are demanding.
I think my main criticism was that he thinks bank-nationalisation and government control of credit is the “worst” that could happen, currently. A greater danger would seem to be that when debt repudiation starts to become commonplace (i.e. beyond Iceland), wars of conquest will be launched to offset the losses of state-owned creditor banks.
No comments on Goff wearing shiny shoes and a suit while he is supposedly helping locals to dig out the oil.
Nice photo op for him.
He didn’t come prepared to shovel oil but people on the beach suggested that he shovel some. What was he going to do? Say fuck off, you’re on your own?
Unlike someone else we could both name, it didn’t involve engineering a photo op. There was no tax-payer funded unnecessary helicopter trip involved.
Perhaps if John Key spent less time attending photo-ops, glad-handing the rich and famous (and only listening to what people tell him is going on in his government) and more time in the office ensuring that his ministers were doing their jobs then perhaps we would have a more efficient government, marine compensation legislation would not be shuffled down the list and he would ensure ministers like Joyce would be making sure Maritime NZ was doing its job and not building holiday highway think-big projects and campaigning to to get his boss elected.
Scientific American: The “Last Place Aversion” Paradox
If ever Americans were up for a bit of class warfare, now would seem to be the time. The current financial downturn has led to a $700 billion tax-payer-financed bank bailout and an unemployment rate stuck stubbornly above nine percent. Onto this scene has stepped the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, which seeks to bring together a disparate group of protesters united in their belief that the current income distribution is unfair. “The one thing we all have in common is that We are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%,” says their website. In an era of bank bailouts and rising poverty – and where recent data show that the top 1 percent control as much as 35 percent of the total wealth in America – it would appear that the timing of this movement to reconsider the allocation of wealth could not be more perfect.
Or, maybe not
heh – a wee detail overlooked is that in a world of diminishing returns… standards of living falling in tandem with resource depletion etc…that ‘last place’ might reasonably be concieved as being ahead of the curve 🙂
Interesting! Debatable however, as the first comment shows…
Nick Smith on The Nation this morning tried very hard to make it look like the government did all that it could from day one of the Rena grounding.
Again, he (and his other Nat pollies) are trying to confuse the issues of the initial response (which is of necessity home-grown, using NZ stores and resources according to advanced planning on a wide range of scenarios) and the work of the salvors which will involve international expertise, the salvors appointed by the owners.
Between the grounding and the work of the salvors and the international experts lies the gap in which New Zealand is on its own and should, MUST, e prepared in every possible way.
That responsibility rests with Maritime NZ. Events and prepared reports that have come to light show that they were not prepared.
It is not good enough for the Gvt to say that there was a problem with the pipes and getting oil off a vessel that is only designed to have oil go on. That is not a new issue! Any person worth their salt would know that in the event of a leaking ship (at sea or in port) would need to have some way of unloading any oil remaining in the ship (broken pipes or not).
That means, we scope the issues, research equipment and techniques on the market, design and build our own if they are not available and we store them. It is inexcusable that and agency charged with the initial response was not better prepared. None of the excuses presented by the government were unforeseeable nor insurmountable with proper planning and provisioning nor was the state of the wreck such that they could not enact a pre-prepared plan.
To say that we do not, nor could we be expected have, the expertise resident in NZ and so we had/have to wait until they arrive is again an attempt for National to confuse in the public mind the initial response and the stage when the salvors arrive. As a principle, we have people being trained every day in first response issues that may be either outside their usual job (eg. an office worker trained in first aid or as a fire warden for their floor of the building) to experts who go overseas or attend courses so they are prepared for a disaster.
All over this country we have full-time or volunteer fire officers who prepare for types of fires, spills etc they may never see in their life time. If the expertise is not local to the fire station then the Fire Service builds that capacity, knowledge and training on a regional or national basis and they practice all sorts of scenarios.
To follow the reasoning of Nick Smith et al what if the emergency initial response people at Auckland airport only prepared for a fire in the terminal? or Only prepared for a runway crash and ignored that they were almost surrounded by water?
NZ is surround by water, we have vessels coming and going, we know the types of fuel they have.
The government is wrong, is lying to us, trying to confuse us and is covering their own political future. We need to not be confused by their obfuscation techniques and as NZdrs who love their country we should stick the issue that “we” (really, the people we paid and trusted to protect us) were not prepared and that will cost us in an environmental cost and hit us again in the pocket!
For every dollar it ultimately costs us to clean this up a worker has to trade time and energy to provide that dollar in taxes. National would rather pay for a $5 plan, leave it to invisible market forces, and irrational belief that business will be responsible and take the risk that it will never have to spend $105 – then tell the poor schmucks who have to pay for it that it was unavoidable, they know better, we are irrational and the lock us out of our beaches!
Well said William!
Now that is one very, very interesting read Joe.
I wonder how long this has been known to the PR/Marketing psychologists who design right-wing spin and propaganda?
Well it has long been known to union organisers that some workers exhibit exactly this type of ‘ranking’ behaviour.
The right has historically used all manner of perceived differences (e.g. race, religion, region, rural/urban, employed/unemployed/precariously employed, immigrant/indigenous, low/mid/high earners) to create division among those that in left terms have many commonalities and reasons for uniting.
The Occupy movement has attempted to sweep that tendency away with its one take classification of society into 1 or 99%ers.
National’s Election Hoardings 2
It is 10-20 per cent less toxic than dishwashing liquid and the ingredients that make up the dispersant are in most shampoos…
Re The Rena and agree wth your comments William Joyce. Maritme NZ are the first responders and should be financed to prepare for the various scenarios and should also develop links with local NZ resources both public and private so that they knew who was out there who could help, instead of ignoring viable offers. In an emergency, mobilising local resources is also something politicians can assist with, if they can be bothered, and clearly NACT can’t be.
On another tack altogether, if we can put a tracking beacon on a penguin, is this done to the containers so that if/when they go overboard they can be located? Not necessarily easy among moving container stacks but there was that fine weather.
Wow Redbaron! Tracking beacon? What a great idea! Indeed why haven’t they?
But I suppose there would have to be a Cabinet Meeting some time in the future and Key would say we have done all that we could, and wasn’t the penguin great and maybe next time, and anyway why didn’t Labour think of it when they were in office? Eh? Ha ha!?
Salsy
I did not see you at John Keys Papamoa meeting. Perhaps you are confused ?
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/push-45-000-new-homes-in-christchurch-4465581
Oh great, so instead of making sure there’s no long term issues with the land freed up, like the high ground water level in Marshlands, or transport system issues the presently cause gridlock every weekday rush hour on main routes into the city from the west and north and ye olde environmental issues, instead Czar Brownlee is over-ruling the Environment Court completely and trying to saturate the market with well over 5 times the number of damaged houses. Perhaps a smarter idea would have been to build a research group to focus purely on what was needed, works in the longterm and fits in with the rest of the rebuild with CERA backing to fast track packets of land for housing, commercial and industrial + all the needed social and economic infrastructure?
Instead of potentially creating a mess of future problems by rubber stamping away…
And I so look forward to potentially loosing all the cheap market gardens and fruit orchards north of me :/
unnamed bank econonist + simon powers new employer + currently pitching for goventments banking = westpac
“Hypocrisy has its own elegant symmetry”
Indeed. What goes around…… Appalling examples of Freedom of speech only for those good Arab folk, not Americans.
Connect this with Bomber Bradbury perhaps? (Good column on Brian Edwards Media.)
Brilliant video. Although we didn’t really need any further confirmation that Obama is every bit the empty vessel we suspected during that insulting “Hope and Change” campaign three years ago and Hillary Clinton is just as callous a liar as her husband.
Whats up with Chris Trotter. He seems to be overwhelemd with his own verbosity. Yesterday he seemed to think that John Kesy was blessed with good luck when all he ever really had was a good wigmaker and now its loose. (old jazz joke). Even the Dompost put him down for being a harbinger of bad luck today. they are not always right but on this one they are.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/rebuilding-christchurch/5788637/Red-zoners-rush-to-buy-lifestyle-blocks
lolwut?
There’s a complex set of fault systems in North Canterbury that generated all those lovely rolling hills and so it’s definitely not “stable” in all but small human time scales, with multiple, rather visible, surface fault traces if you know what to look for.
Isnt that where they plaing to frack?
Looks like a reasonable size crowd as the Occupy Aotea Square begins in Auckland:
http://www.3news.co.nz/Thousands-turn-out-for-Occupy-Queen-Street/tabid/423/articleID/229641/Default.aspx
http://wa1.www.3news.co.nz/Portals/0-Articles/229641/occupy-queen-street-600.jpg?width=300;pv5b15bd9ee6bc68e2
I have just finished watching an inspirational interview with ex President Jimmy Carter on BBC. The intellect, the vision, the humour… all at 87.
If it is repeated somewhere, don’t miss it.
And isn’t it great where the subject of the interview tells his story rather than being constantly interrupted by the egocentric interviewer, NZ style.
Carol
Aotea Square – sure you can count ? – thousands – where did you get that figures from.
Cloca
Carol 20 commet in the second line.
http://www.3news.co.nz/Thousands-turn-out-for-Occupy-Queen-Street/tabid/423/articleID/229641/Default.aspx