A police investigation into a campaign of harassment against prominent China researcher Anne-Marie Brady has widened to include apparent efforts to sabotage her car.
University of Canterbury professor Brady, who gained international profile over the past 18 months for her work exposing China’s influence campaigns – including in New Zealand – was subjected to a series of mysterious break-ins at her home and campus office in February.
These burglaries, apparently targeting electronic media including phones, computers and USB drives, sparked high-level interest with the Prime Minister expressing concern, and the Police began a nine-month – and still ongoing – investigation involving Interpol.
The vehicular sabotage represents an escalation for the case, coming on the heels of recent vitriolic editorials in local Chinese-language media describing the professor and New Zealand-Chinese democracy activists as “anti-Chinese sons of bitches”…..
……Commentary in local Chinese-language media has been an especially heated, with a recent op-ed by Morgan Xiao – published simultaneously by SkyKiwi, the Mandarin Pages and the New Zealand Chinese Daily News – describing Brady and other New Zealand-Chinese democracy activists as “anti-Chinese sons of bitches” who should “get out of New Zealand”.
+1 Ed – harassment, illegal activity like stealing data for foreign powers, (or worse) should NOT be acceptable in NZ and there should be a lot more resources on it.
We have had the French agents blowing up Rainbow Warrior, Isrealis stealing our passports and now Chinese agents apparently taking data/harrassment/stealing from NZ researchers and worse.
Is the Labour government going to say meh, or are they going to apprehend the perpetrators and prosecute them???? Considering the taxpayer funded budget of the SIS and GCSB you have to wonder how hard can it be and are they competent to do the job?
In addition NZ needs to step up with regards to espionage in NZ… look at the mess the Brits are in, when they are so internally focused they turn a blind eye to espionage in their own country. No wonder there are blatant assassinations going on around the world from foreign powers, as there as there does not seem much interest from governments in protecting citizens anymore.
Mysterious factory break-in raises suspicions about Chinese visit
“It was an unusual burglary, in which four or five laptops were stolen from a Scottish renewable energy manufacturer in the dead of a March night in 2011. So innovative was the company that it had been been visited by a 60-strong delegation led by China’s then vice-premier only two months before.
Nothing else was taken from the company and the crime, while irritating, went unsolved and forgotten – until a few years later pictures began emerging that showed a remarkably similar project manufactured in the world’s most populous country.”
I’ve read that China’s acquisition of IP developed elsewhere is estimated as the largest transfer of wealth ever.
If you look at the R&D costs over time, resources, infrastructure, trial and error you’d skip its a staggering value in today’s currency they’ve bypassed.
The xian y-20 compared to the us c-17 being one the most blatant as they got sprung using a Canadian based expat to highlight the files/folders from compromised servers for lift and shift to China.
@TC, yep and use that money to buy up assets like significant amounts of NZ and OZ…
While the west politicians are getting selfies and self promoting in magazines and MSM or firing off on Twitter, the Chinese government are to be admired in a way as they steadily and carefully advancing their cause, gathering power and strategic assets, partnerships and soft power…
Natz can be bought for $100k, how cheap is that?
Sadly our government in NZ has become greedy and/or naive self promoters hoping for a crust of bread and a pat on the head, as 30 years post Rogernomics our politicians and the general discourse being promoted is that Kiwis are only good at Rugby and a few other sports and incapable of self governing, working or running our own businesses, assets or countries successfully.
So very easy for the Chinese to step in to help, self govern NZ and their businesses and assets in the face of greed, disinterest and brainwashing of the NZ political elite and MSM.
We have also given up our security to others in particular the US in real terms and so now at the mercy of others.
There is a difference between collaboration/friendship and throwing your hands up and leaving it all up to other governments and paper agreements to decide your future and fate and NZ seems to be erring on the lazy second option with no plan B of self management.
Don’t blame them actually. Most US patents are not innovation, just blatant privatisation of others ideas. Parenting rounded corners on a cell phone. FFS.
Rentier capitalism at it’s worse.
US prosperity begins, by ignoring all previous British property rights.
Is the Labour government going to say meh, or are they going to apprehend the perpetrators and prosecute them?
All indications are that they’re going to say ‘meh’ so as to keep up Fonterra’s exports. Apparently maintaining NZ for NZers under NZ control comes a distant second to that.
It occurs to me that Ed is continually bringing up foreign problems and ctiticising the USA and China etc. Whereas I want to see this blog continue and look at what is happening here. If Ed steps on enough toes and makes enough wild assertions about the large dominating foreign powers, it takes time away from us. If it incurs enough wrath Ed’s stuff alone could make it a likely target to be taken to court or closed down.
And groups can get infiltrated; we have wondered who is behind these extra right regulars. There is something driven about them, and the same could apply to those supposedly speaking for the left. I’m just a concerned left-leaning twit myself. I wonder about Ed and others.
It occurs to me that Ed is continually bringing up foreign problems and ctiticising the USA and China etc. Whereas I want to see this blog continue and look at what is happening here.
There are parallels.
We know that the previous National government pretty much copied social policy from the UK and that they copied charter schools from the US. So, seeing what’s happening to them can give us an idea of the damages that National will do next time they’re in power.
This is normal for anyone who dares to criticize the new Mao, Chairman Xi. My main reading is Chinese web news sites in NZ. This is mild compared to everyday comments in Chinese language media. ANY opposing view that even slightly is against Community Party views is considered as being traitor. Yet many on this blog say how great China system is! It is not!
I am called a traitor to China by my own family and Chinese friends in NZ as I am in the process of applying for NZ Citizenship. This is what the Community Party has done to the people in my country.
Thank you for your brave words. The CCCP is indeed a soft tyranny of a nature the western world struggles to understand properly.
My only small objection is that I do not think a majority of us here are admirers of the Chinese regime and it’s expansionist ambitions. Most of us loath empire wherever it appears.
Yes, China is an empire, although few Kiwis see that. Mr Xi is step by step becoming Mao. The ‘Thoughts of Chairman Xi’ is now a reality that rivals the ‘Thoughts of Chairman Mao’. Unlimited term as leader. Increased censorship. Imprisonment and ‘re-education’ of Uyghurs. But in China most people support him still. Economically very good.
Forced abortion when already have one child was common 20 years ago. When I studied nursing, the man on the autopsy table was a criminal, a bullet hole clearly in his forehead. We thought this was right, but it is not. Bribery to get into hospital – yes this is the great Community Party state that so many Kiwis still think is a utopia. There are many things that were and in many parts of China, especially local places, are pure evil. But this was all we knew. Young Chinese people very very different. The future for China will be interesting I think.
Yes that is true, but in China even an emergency, life in danger, in many places you will not even get admitted to hospital. This is very true. And drugs you must pay for. In NZ, I do not have health insurance or my son, yet we get a higher level of care than in China.
In 2016, I spent 4 months in China. My son had been injured in an accident. His father and I paid for pain relief and antibiotics. NZ not that bad!
I haven’t noticed commentators here saying “how great China system is!” I’ve seen some (including myself) criticising it. Polarising into a simple binary view of anything is usually too simple-minded – those who do so lose accuracy in their description. Any political system will have pros & cons. I agree that the international community has been too tolerant of the endemic misbehaviour of the regime for far too long.
As far as your relations are concerned, it may help to frame things in generic terms – the future for China will require adaption to a common-interest framework. National self-interest therefore must be balanced by acknowledgment of the interests of other nations. In respect of China’s attempt to reassert their regional hegemony, we can expect all other nations affected to align in consensus to oppose such re-emergence of imperialism. A balance of equal and opposite forces is therefore eventually inevitable. Naive expectations of success will be replaced by realism. In the interim, any delusional thinking by decision-makers is dangerous…
Yes Chinese political system was necessary for our recent decades of rapid growth. We all pulled in the same direction. No serious opposition was allowed. But now it is still the same, yet the need is no longer there.
You mention my relations, no! Older than me and have never left China, so still have Maos isolationist view of the world.
The biggest challenges for China in the years ahead are the young people, who travel. And the looming huge problem of Xinjiang. And Xizang.
@Fang Zhou – some Kiwis are worried about the Chinese government too, so even if it seems that people might sound anti Chinese be aware most of the time it is directed against the CCP getting a stranglehold into NZ not against Chinese people and also the worry that Chinese residents might be pressured to work for the Chinese government interests even if they didn’t want to on foreign soil, so great might be influence be as our government and industry is asleep at the wheel.
To be fair to the TS, I have not seen anyone say they want the Chinese system. But they do want a return to authoritarian govt control, which could be interrupted as wanting the Chinese system.
A small number on the extreme Left want a authoritarian govt that own pretty much everything. (banks, insurance, utilities, Supermarkets, etc) I think but stand to be corrected that someone wrote that if a person invents something or has a innovative idea they shouldn’t own it but it becomes the property of the state and the people.
Much like what you have in China with the control of central govt over most things and most Chinese corps having some level of govt ownership or control.
China bans facebook and a number of other social sites and developed its own wechat and weibo that can be monitored.
Now we see millions of cameras, name and shame in papers and Huge LED screens around the cities highlighting wrong doing of citizens in real time for example j walking and social credit points for citizens.
I don’t see many on here that want a “Government controlled utopia”. Even the most ardent anti-capitalists still want a democratic Government. Many of the right wingers are open to increased democracy, also.
Government by us.
As for the State owning banks and utilities. When it is a real democratic State it is all of us that own them.
Ownership of patents and innovations very rarely accrues to the innovator. Usually they are acquired by a corporation which uses then for unearned rent for ridiculous lengths of time. Amazons book rights, for example.
You are confusing Democratic ownership with an authoritarian State. At the moment we have an Authoritarian State controlled by corporate donations and influence. And, I suspect, with considerable evidence, a lot of power exerted covertly by the US, Chinese and British Governments. Often in behalf of their corporations.
Good comment – in the long term CCP influence over the NZ Chinese community does not bode well for how that community is perceived by the wider population.
Here’s some interesting information on China and I’m a little concerned at was has happened, but not surprised IRT Professor Brady as the same thing happened to Clive Hamilton when he was trying to get his book published called “The Silent Invasion”.
Here’s some interesting information on China and I’m a little concerned at was has happened, but not surprised IRT Professor Brady as the same thing happened to Clive Hamilton when he was trying to get his book published called “The Silent Invasion
America has spent $5.9 trillion on wars in the Middle East and Asia since 2001, a new study says
The U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Pakistan have cost American taxpayers $5.9 trillion since they began in 2001.
The figure reflects the cost across the U.S. federal government since the price of war is not borne by the Defense Department alone.
The report also finds that more than 480,000 people have died from the wars and more than 244,000 civilians have been killed as a result of fighting. Additionally, another 10 million people have been displaced due to violence.
Interesting angle from Jeffrey Kaye on the killing of Khashoggi.
Fascinating.
Khashoggi was ‘the only non-royal Saudi who had the beef on the royals’ intimate dealing with al Qaeda in the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks.’
The 9/11 Commission’s final report went out of its way to absolve the Saudis of direct culpability in the attacks. “Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of al-Qaeda funding, but we have found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organisation,” the report said.
But there remain strong grounds to doubt the veracity of these findings, and allegations of high-level Saudi complicity in terrorism have not gone away. Even former 9/11 Commissioners have spoken on record about how they believed their entire investigation had been compromised by the White House, accusing the US government of wanting to “cover up” the full story of 9/11.
Earlier this year, a US lawsuit on behalf of families of the 9/11 victims linking Saudi officials to the 9/11 attacks was cleared to proceed by US District Judge George Daniels in New York.
“The [Saudi] Ministry of Islamic Affairs in the United States and other parts of the world had government officials who conspired with al-Qaeda to support them and to support the 9/11 hijackers,” said Andrew Maloney, a lawyer for the 9/11 victims’ families.
“The 9/11 Commission back in 2003 and 2004 either didn’t pursue, didn’t want to pursue, covered up for the Saudis or just never got around to finishing the investigation. That’s where we picked it up, and we’ve collected a lot more information and evidence since then.”
It’s the facts they’ve agreed too though. That a official signed off on a warrant for K. That they wanted to rendition K. That they targeted K when he sought a marriage licence, thus attacking the ability to legally start a family, nasty.So who paid for the flights. Who told the embassy to stock up on plastic sheets. Sorry but I can’t believe that a they got the go head without serious authority being involved, and that’s before you consider who was most irate and irritated by K. The idea that S.A. will walk away thinking people global don’t now know what they do in their embassies, that we all now sanction by allow those embassies on our soil. And then it gets worse, not only attacking the family of K, his future family, not only renditioning him, or murdering premeditively, but he was a top journalist resident of the USA. Their is serious no way Trump can stop action. So their laughable fake news conference, that only exposes a whole new raft of questions while reinforcing the view that a whitewash was in train, a whitewash protecting a ruthless man. And who could that be, the leprosy of Qatar, the evil in Yeman, and the how dare he get married. If the US does continue to dither, then its even worse, the moral ethical outrage, of the holy land for Islam, coupled to K, coupled to Israel new US embassy… …And then add the explosive that wars mean men don’t come home, mean four wives… …it’s not to hard to see soldiers getting fessup of being fodder, realizing their job actually is to die so their betters can have a extra wife.
If I were a progressive S.A. leader, I’d end multiple wives, pull out of Yeman, reengage Qatar… get Trump to backtrack on embassy… but all we get is dangerous dithering from Ryad.
Upper Hutt Posse, their frontman Dean Hapeta, at the end of his speech called out ‘Free Palestine’ condemned trump and called out government for sending our troops to fight fake wars over oil among other political messages.
Dean has never been afraid to speak his mind, “E Tu” & the Dam Native years all righteous stuff. Now await the vitriol coz a brown guy dare speak his truth…
Those names are a blast from the past.
I loved the first two upper hutt posse albums.
Cheers student radio.
Well ahead of its time, preceeding rage against the machine with the fusion of rock, rap and injustice.
The message was spot on although some stuff was hard to hear through pakeha ears.
Can you just clarify for me what wars we currently have troops fighting in? Motivation aside I can’t think of any current deployments that involve combat troops.
Government over the years and decades have sent troops to locations in the middle east to assist the USA lead wars. Which more often than not have one thing in common, oil. Peace isn’t profitable.
Pretty sure the speech made referenced Afghanistan.
Wonder if there is a clip of the full speech. The political part is at the end of the speech, will see if I can find later,
I think the question was ‘what wars we currently have troops fighting in’?
I have lost touch too Crashcart. Our Radionz news is full of what is happening in the USA but I don’t think we have any action within that country thank goodness. But elsewhere? What do the military buffs know?
@ grey: Just as MoBIE, MSD and others in gubbamint are concerned , AND in the interests of ‘open gubbamint’ (going forward), [Maybe, oneday lprent could give us his impressions and experiences on a thread we could call ‘technophobia’]
Maybe the NZDF might care to publish their activities (across the 3 – almy, navvie and ear force), and with all due deference (to ‘the 5’) on a website.
With a cuzzie that once served in ‘peace keeping’ in the Sinai, and Singapore, and in the spooks for a quite a while thereafter till the alcopops and the liver got the better of him, I’ve also lost track
It does seem reasonable though that they could keep all the plebs appraised of their activities (all within the bounds of keeping shit secret in our Neshnool interest)
I’ve lost touch too both @ Crashcart and @Grey[non]warshark – not that I ever wanted to have such ‘touch’ in the first place.
I did appreciate however being told not to go near a Bainimarama’s Fiji a decade ago – based on the passport I held at the time. As it happens ,it now makes me even more cynical about various ‘competencies’ in our public service – the silos, the politicisation, the egos, the incompetencies, the agendas, the conflicted interests ……
Yes, going off at a tangent here, again, I thought about our police and how they wouldn’t venture into Pike mine at the beginning and now they are playing it safe again. And how much grief and extra cost that has caused. And they wouldn’t provide backup when trained miners wanted to make a series of reccies.
Thinks, would the Thai cave success be equalled if it happened here? Of course it isn’t the same as Pike because there may be a case to be heard in Court. That would have eaten a large part of the police and justice budget allocation. I wonder if the departments were under instruction to curb their enthusiasm?
/Agreed.
(At the time, and probably/possibly still), completely the wrong agency to have been leading any rescue effort. Peter Cowan – nice enough bloke and all that, and a good cop, but in that situation, out of his depth and encumbered with the wrong sort of mission.
I think the decision not to go ahead with attempting a rescue of miners who were almost certainly dead, risking a lot more deaths, was the correct one.
I doubt that the police made the decision without expert advice.
Talking to one of the mine rescuers afterwards. He said the police probably saved his life, restraining them from rushing in.
Certainly it is unfair to judge the person who had to make that sort of decision in the moment, with the information available at the time, using information they didn’t have.
The picture of men, waiting for a rescue that didn’t come, is a powerful one. But the ones in charge had to weigh up the real risk to rescuers, against the, slight, possibility of survivors.
Not a decision I would like to have to make. Though I am aware it may happen.
And where’s that PM even if it was a fake acting one up here. I’ve got some words for you.
All of our armed forces and military that have been fighting in these fake wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for oil, for USA imperialism; get out of there!
What you need to be doing is going to Palestine to fight against the racist terrorism of the Israeli State, that’s where all of our fighting energy needs to be.
And also, even more, death to the Mexican USA border and defend that caravan of indigenous people seeking refugee status at the United Snakes of America kkk.
They are seeking refuge because their countries have been wrecked by that colonial power known as the USA.
The largest current deployment by far is the training team in Iraq (over 150). Just renewed by the current govt for another 12 months.
All about training Iraqi forces to defeat ISIS.
If you think ISIS should not be opposed (with military force) well that’s your view. But obviously Jacinda et al do not share that view.
I am pretty sure the majority of New Zealanders would think ISIS has to be militarily opposed and that NZ should, at least to some extent, be part of the international coalition. The training team was probably the right level of commitment. There were polls on thiols at the time of the initial deployment when John Key was PM which showed clear support.
I was actually surprised that Jacinda and the Cabinet renewed the mandate for another 12 months. After all, ISIS has largely been defeated in Iraq. So presumably it was about NZ showing our partners that we are a reliable partner, notwithstanding the change of government.
Dean Hapeta at the Music awards would well have represented the Green Party view (and the left of Labour) but it is a minority view.
“I am pretty sure the majority of New Zealanders would think ISIS has to be militarily opposed and that NZ should, at least to some extent, be part of the international coalition. ”
And that is based on what? Polling, focus group, personal preference?
“It was a decision that surprised Victoria University professor of strategic studies Robert Ayson, who believed there was good reason for a withdrawal from Iraq, given Isis was “no longer the battleground force it once was”.
“You need a compelling reason in Iraq to stay, and I’m not entirely sure that is there, so I think that now would have been a time to say, ‘Right, we’ve done what we said we were there to do’.”
My recollection is at the time of the initial deployment the public polls were clearly in favour.
As for the current extension, I essentially said what Dr Ayson said. But that is not the only consideration for the extension of the deployment. NZ does not like to be the first out of an international coalition, and that is pretty much what we would have been.
I suspect the Govt thought the deployment was sufficiently Ok that the extension would not to cause any significant local reaction. And they were right. It didn’t.
I may be doing you a disservice but I suspect your claim that it was an acceptance of the majority view that was the deciding factor in the deployment decision was more a case of wishful thinking rather than any knowledge of such.
Anything to do with the, almost, total lack of information on troop deployments from our news media.
So much so, that we learn about them first through the Ozzie papers.
And the constant propaganda about big bad Iraq. Which was OK until they threatened the petrodollar. Like Libya. And indeed, Iran’s Government in the 50’s. Too Democratic for the Western powers, replaced by the Shar, and Savak.
To begin with they also funded the mujahadeen.
This was to try and save putting soldiers on the ground.
The purpose to overthrow despot rigimes in both cases costly mistakes!
“Vanity projects and kamikaze loggias: Tbilisi’s architectural disaster
The centre of the Georgian capital has long been the plaything of outsize egos – but can its architecture biennial inspire useful debate about the city’s future?
Joseph Alexander Smith, a Briton who has lived in Tbilisi for the last six years, was driven by what he witnessed to stand for local election last year on a platform of environmental activism, campaigning against chronic traffic problems, pollution and the unabated development that has blighted much of the city. “We have lost one of the city’s oldest streets, Mirza Shafi,” he says, “and now developers are hand-in-glove with politicians, intent on destroying everything that is left. Everyone has a right to air, not just the right to breath clean air, but to look out of their window and not be confronted by the concrete wall of a new illegal building.”
Is this going to be Phil Goff, John Key, Brownlee’s fate…. exile with criminal charges for corruption and in NZ case, gross stupidity as well???
“Saakashvili behaved like a king, just picking his favourites with no competition or discussion,” says Zhvania. “He dismissed any opposition voices as retrogrades, standing in the way of modernisation.”
The former president may now be living in exile in the Netherlands, wanted on multiple criminal charges back home, but his physical legacy is still very much felt – and others have eagerly picked up where he left off.”
“Why? Because the council officials understood that a councillor’s reputation was built upon his or her ability to get things done for the people who voted them into office. Repeated failure to fix their problems would very soon lead to gripes about Councillor So-and-So being “useless”. The slightest whisper that such an opinion was abroad in the electorate would have the impugned councillor knocking very loudly on the door of the Town Clerk, demanding to know what the hell was going on. That’s why action almost always followed.”
“Councillors are reduced to a browbeaten collection of rubber-stampers: prey to private sector contractors, condescending legal advisers, and over-mighty CEOs. The final indignity being that, having signed up to the Councillors’ Code of Conduct, these poor souls are forbidden from speaking out angrily, or publicly, about their powerlessness.”
I think in Phil Goff’s case, he is being used by the CEO and private sector to be a front man on the attack against local government and democracy. How else do you fathom taking off 2 elected councillors from Auckland Transport (that gets the lions share of ratepayers rates, but has a poor and dismal service record)?
A continuation of the observation that the vast majority of voices are increasingly ignored in western democracies…..and we wonder why ‘populism’ gains currency.
The establishment brings it upon itself and only they can solve it.
When less than 50% of voters bother to vote this happens.
Then people moan endlessly but go out and drum up support for representation on council no!
You get what you don’t vote for the status quo!
Skippy’s public service reform should extend to local bodies.
Never was that being ‘forbidden from speaking out’ about what is best described as muppetry more evident in Wellington recently in a Simon Wolf – Lavery exchange.
It’s a case of ‘officials’ throwing elected representatives ‘under a bus’ if anything.
And even when those ‘officials’ are legally in the wrong, they’re apt to push things to the limit, often in the knowledge that people don’t have the resources to face them off.
Someone near me must get a hell of a lot of texts. There’s at least of couple of tuis doing the Samsung default alert, and a few years ago they were doing the Nokia alert.
Looks like service is already declining, tired of public services being cut or not funded appropriately for population and tourist growth that the government is so keen on, while our taxes are used to further private profits that are publicly funded!
Urgent answers needed after rescue helicopter unavailable
How come these communicators with the public can lie and never get called out on it? They need to be confronted, their organisation which is probably contracted to do government work, at their profit, should be exposed and tarred and feathered or made to walk through the streets with their trousers down looking stupid.
Brazilian military now taking over all the major roles in the Brazilian government. The US has been backing the coup with US, European and Brazilian corporates benefiting.
“I think what we are seeing is a massive transfer of Brazil’s natural resources to the north right now. Brazil is one of the richest countries in the world in terms of natural resources.Its petroleum, its minerals, its gold, its fresh water – they are talking about privatising the world’s largest acquifier to Coca Cola right now.”
How shameful “privatising the world’s largest acquifier to Coca Cola right now’
pity Jacinda is not using her status to question the fairness of bad deals and public asset transfer to private business, rather than actually promoting the practise of ‘FREE trade’ around the world. How bout they rebrand to FREEBIE trade agreements, it would be kinder and more honest.
Tellingly even with the excitement when apparently Mike Pence wanted to sit next to Arden, did she use the moment to discuss her supposedly nuclear free moment of climate change or urge US to uphold the Paris agreement and help the environment, nope instead it is reported that she focused on unsuccessfully pressing New Zealand’s case for an exemption on US tariffs on steel and aluminium which are mostly foreign owned multinational companies.
So who would even benefit from the lift of US tariffs on steel and aluminium – well mostly the profits of overseas firms.
Who owns NZ steel, well BHP, formerly known as BHP Billiton, is the trading entity of BHP Billiton Limited and BHP Billiton plc, an Anglo-Australian multinational mining, metals and petroleum dual-listed public company headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia and owns significant amounts of the formally known New Zealand Steel.
The raw material for NZ steel is ironsand which is disappearing fast around the world and can not be replaced and has virtually zero studies on the long term effects on the eco systems.
Who owns NZ Aluminimum, NZAS is 79.36 per cent owned by Pacific Aluminium which in turn is owned by Rio Tinto Group an Anglo-Australian multinational and one of the world’s largest metals and mining corporations and 20.64 per cent owned by Japan’s Sumitomo Chemical Company.
So when our politicians have the ear of world leaders are they really thinking of the people of NZ or international peace and well being and climate change and environmental issues, or just promoting the short term profiteering of multinational big business???
It seems clear to me where Labour’s focus is, either intentionally or unintentionally!
Collective bargaining works! Funny we all happy when sports people do it – but outside of a few select sectors how many people are organised collectively?
Big ups to the truckers in Iran. This is the second round of strikes and after the government arrested some of these same protestors – it takes real guts (unlike fake ponytail pulling guts) to carry on a strike in the face of a government used to suppressing working people.
Maine has its first taste of ranked choice voting for US House seats. On election night, the incumbent Repug won a plurality of first choice votes, but second (and maybe third) choices tipped it to the Dem. So naturally the loser Repug is suing.
Ranked choice is slowly spreading to other states as well. So despite all the crap around gerrymandering, voter suppression and loads of other noxious anti-democracy actions, there are still some pockets of progress towards better democracy in the US.
When it was revealed on Wednesday morning that the mysterious figure was Steve Bannon, few were surprised. The invitation was a predictably out-of-touch move by an institution that was once renowned for its impactful and passionate debates but is now more commonly visited by professional footballers, comedians on publicity tours and extremists looking for establishment credentials.
In his reasoning for the invite, the president of the union, Stephen Horvath, presented the standard, free-speech argument that “it is only through listening to the opinions of others that we can fully understand those opinions”. The idea being that a group of university students would be able to hold fascism to account through a one-hour debate on a Friday afternoon.
“Chinese speaking buyers offered first dibs on ‘top secret’ luxury apartment planned for Auckland
A “top secret” 24-storey luxury apartment tower planned for Auckland’s North Harbour has been snapped up by exclusive buyers months before the public gets a look in.
The 72.5 metre apartment planned for Kaipiho Lane, Albany will feature more than 280 apartments, 11 lifts, a helicopter landing pad, residents’ cinema, swimming pool, clubhouse, ballroom, 24 hour concierge and robotic valet parking.
A website marketing the development in Chinese, http://www.kaipiho.co.nz, said the apartments “caused a subscription frenzy” when they were promoted on Chinese social media app WeChat.:
P>S> clearly the government and councils measures to curb the housing shortages futile as seen in this example, but actually creating more poverty for Kiwis who end up subsidising the roads, congestion, Leaks, public transport, pollution etc that all these new developments for speculators who don’t even live here, are generating.
Chinese people want to get their money out of China and into gold bricks before their currency devalues or worse they take down the banks with lending, Kiwi housing investments should not be part of the solution of cash China 1.5 billion people, because our people and environment is the casualty of poor risk planning as is more exposure ‘If China Sneezes Will the Rest of the World Catch a Cold”.
And there aren’t even jobs for car valets. Perhaps someone will be able to hack their garage systems and send cars to be parked outside, or go to be serviced or such like. Just annoying glitches. We have plenty of those in NZ and would love to share them around.
I think you do not understand that whether you like it or not, NZ needs Chinese capital to flow in to correct balance of payments and keep Kiwi dollar high. Most Chinese property owners are resident in NZ, at least most of the time. We are a positive contribution to NZ, yet you paint us as fleeing China before the currency collapses. Maybe you should learn more about China and spend an extended period there before you preach the collapse of the Yuan.
Yes, corruption is sadly still normal in China, and at all levels. However, the younger Chinese not so much. But you seem to assume that the capital coming in to NZ is from corruption. This is, to me, if that is your thinking, not only wrong but racist wrong.
Many Chinese people are extremely wealthy not from corruption, but from riding the rapid growth of China economy. Look at Jack Ma, now one of the wealthiest men in the world. Not from corruption, but from business. There are 1.4 billion Chinese in China. 1 in 25 people in the world live within China’s borders. There are many many little Mr Ma’s, not wealthy from corruption but from hard work and smart work. Many of these want a better life in NZ, and many share their time between China and NZ, but invest in NZ and run business in China. This is good for NZ.
Please do not think all Chinese rich people are corrupt. They are not.
“Please do not think all Chinese rich people are corrupt. They are not.”
I don’t think all Chinese are corrupt, what is wrong with NZ is our NZ immigration policy is so pathetic and the criteria is not robust that our government has been bringing in all types of migrants or migrant workers who are corrupt, dishonest and liars, and they when they find out that they are all of that, they just let them stay here… all the while when we could have a robust policy to attract the best migrants here who could make a greater difference…
I don’t blame the Chinese, because it is not the Chinese fault that NZ government is stupid and does not discriminate against honest and dishonest people who come to NZ to live, work or study.
Should be, commit a crime in NZ, lie on your immigration forms or are found guilty of corruption and you are straight out the door and never to be allowed back into NZ whether you are Chinese, Korean, English, EU, Indian, or Russian or what have you. Not a ethnic based policy but a moral one.
Due to the isolation of NZ and our lack of robust immigration measures we do seem to attract our fair share of criminals trying to hide out here, or commit identity theft.
I didn’t say ‘the capital coming into NZ is from corruption’. I said corruption comes with the capital.
The other thing about Chinese wealth is the conditions under which it has been generated. Scant regard for human rights, political rights, worker rights, justice, and the environment has been the foundation upon which the Chinese capitalist economy has grown at such a fast pace.
You might have realised you are commenting on a forum which is inspired by the labour movement and so worker rights, and recently the environment, are high on most commenters’ list of priorities. I doubt whether a forum like The Standard would exist for very long in China and so when I look at the huge increase in wealth in that country I see it as tainted by injustice. You won’t find the same concerns on NZ blogs from the other side of the political divide.
Now, you might say it is the West’s consumerism which has partially funded the explosion of wealth in China and you would be right. I buy ‘made in China’ – it is difficult to not – so I too am guilty in a sense.
There will no doubt be some very good people emigrating to New Zealand but there will be a significant trail of corruption also and that is why we must ask questions, review settings, and be watchful.
You are right: The Standard (or any non-government blog) would not last very long in China.
And yes, I do realise I am commentating on a forum inspired by the labour movement. I also support that, but that does not mean blindly! A wrong by a socialist is just as bad as a wrong by a capitalist. Maybe worse, as the capitalist does not pretend what their motivation is.
The corruption I would disagree. In my experience, most Chinese coming here are reasonably young and well educated. They have experienced corruption throughout their life and do not like it. The money, including the big money that comes with them, is I think untouched.
Of more concern to NZ should be not the Chinese money coming to NZ, but rather when Kiwi engage in big business in China. It is inconceivable to me that Kiwirail or Fonterra are untouched by this. To do business in China at that level, well, I will not say the rest but you I am sure understand.
The other area of great concern to NZ should be immigration. I would suggest that almost EVERY Chinese that immigrates has been a party to corruption during the immigration process.
@Fang Zhou. It’s the market driven flow of capital and being at the mercy of that capital and bad foreign decisions (ak BNZ floating and having to bail them out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_New_Zealand) that has caused the biggest crashes and poverty in NZ..
the Chinese situation will be exactly the same but worse as NZ has created too much dependancy on both Chinese investment and US security decisions.
Sadly the dominant discourse in NZ is neoliberalism and the pursuit of money, making our government decisions short term, lazy and stupid and allowed too much dependancy on other countries.
I think NZ and China should be friends but NZ becoming dependant on them for investment is a complete mistake.
As for high dollar in NZ, causes people living and working here huge problems, much higher mortgages and lending, less money from exports. Cheaper imports.
“I think you do not understand that whether you like it or not, NZ needs Chinese capital to flow in to correct balance of payments and keep Kiwi dollar high. ”
I don’t know why you should think that. Even if it has been true in specific circumstances at one time, I do not see any need to favour Chinese capital over other capital, but it is also a destructive goal to set long term – if we need capital from immigrants, what does that tell you about wealth inequality within our country – and why wold an immigrant was to enter a country that requires immigrants to purchase capital assets to survive?
Far better that we fix some of the inequalities that currently plague us, that we develop domestic-owned enterprises to force competition on foreign owned companies (banks may be a good start), and recognise that we need to look after our population and leave them a country worth living, working and staying in – regardless of where they come from.
Sorry my bad explaining I think. No, should not favour Chinese capital over capital from elsewhere, but NZ needs capital inflow, regardless of where it comes from. Chinese invest heavily in NZ, certainly compared to many other immigrant groups. And yes, that can push up property prices but also many many Chinese build houses and buy businesses, and that provides work and increases the housing pool. And GST paid and so on.
Chinese, and others, wish to enter NZ as it is a better life here. Despite what many seem to think, the standard of living is about the same for the average person, but quality of life here is much higher.
Yes, I agree with you regarding NZ owned enterprises, looking after the NZ population. Do you not think though that I, coming here and, when I first arrived, buying a business was not also indirectly looking after the NZ population? I paid taxes, employed two part-timers.
It is not that I disagree with you, but ‘how’. Many immigrants just get on with it. Work long hours and invest in the next generation. Kiwi people work hard, but seem to prefer to be employees rather than take risks. Immigrants often have no choice but to risk everything (we did that by coming here!). So we invest, we buy businesses, we try harder. I know that is a generalisation, but that is my experience.
It’s interesting you object to a generalisation by making a generalisation about Kiwis preferring to be employees – none of our family are and are in a quite wide set of infrastructure and construction businesses. Years of long hard earned reputation and resilience has meant we have survived in the face of being undercut on prices and lower standards, some have not. That’s not some prejudiced “opinion”, it’s based on factual events and is something that is sad when it happen. Something NZ should be able to work for as it did historically is to uplift the conditions and prospects of NZers not have that regress by being damned into working longer hours or under conditions that are any longer than what is necessary to get the work done and get it done right and for a fair price.
Agree that many Chinese people are not their Government.
However our dollar is too high. One of the reasons for China’s recent economic ascendancy, is their Government deliberately keeps their currency low, encouraging exports and discouraging imports, into China.
I don’t think pushing house prices up beyound the reach of locals is a positive contribution to New Zealand. And it is USA’ians, British and South Africans, as well as Chinese. Any more than the British wealthy in, Spain hogging all the coastal real estate.
@ Monty, many thanks for that info. I have never heard the term “Robotic Parking” before, so as a result, my decrepit old brain went into overdrive (no pun intended) 🙂
Chinese property investment abroad is a diversification, risk managemrnt, as the domestic market may be in slow down (over supply).
The current or future value of the yuan would have little to do with it.
The development you mention, use of land for property to people not currently residents, shows what the governments relaxation of the its new rules for foreign purchase leads to.
I think the Chinese preference to invest in NZ real estate is that here you own the dirt.
All Chinese land is owned by everyone, it can only be leased.
We can leave our NZ properties to our children, in China it can be left for the duration of a lease but thereafter it resorts to state ownership and Mr Xi decides if continued occupation is desirable.
Having lived in Shanghai and now HKG for over 4 years now. Those type of complexes are common. The developers add these things to attract buyers its like an apartment arms race.
It is good and very convenient for the people living there.
The one I lived in Shanghai had all of that plus a super market, 10 underground tennis courts, couple B ball courts, pools training and resort style, Gym, Spa, Dance and Yoga studios.
The robotic parking was humorous as at least a couple people per week got caught and forgot to get out of the car and got stuck. (mainly their own fault wechatting and not being aware of the surroundings)
But where was she sitting in relation to Pence? Young doesn’t give us the seating plan in detail which is odd because it’s the detail which seems to have got under her skin.
Was the PM one over from Pence? If so I believe that’s as close as Pence will allow any woman other than his wife.
“For several days her officials had been telling New Zealand media that she would be sitting next to Pence at his request.“
What Young points out is the spin. ‘Next to Pence at his request’ is not next to Mrs Pence, whatever the seating plan. This would be nitpicking if those same officials hadn’t made such an issue if it.
I’m more thinking of those few minutes in the dark after both have put their books down, clicked off the Tiffany bedside lamps and while drowsing off Mrs Pence says…
“Have you seen any footage of those abandoned children on Nauru Island honey.”
Probably separate houses but for as long as Mrs Pence is on Mike’s arm at the many events they attend, there is no better path for Jacinda to pursue if she wants Mike to get onboard with something.
Breast-feeding Prime Ministers come with a fair slice of gravitas in the eyes of Washington’s silver vixens.
What about the big health and safety issue of onions on my sausage at Bunnings?
It is amusing when you hear it at first, but you cant deny they are taking safety seriously. Pity Pike river mine management was not as safety conscious as we may not have lost 29 people.
Because some muppet over here in Oz, slip on some BBQ onions with his sausage sanger at Bunnings in NSW or Vic and a filed a WHS complaint. This muppet may’ve even got a payout with WHS the complaint? Just like some of the muppets you slip on fruit/ veggies aisle or at the drinks aisle and try in sue the company for a few quid in the process.
Oh yeah – one of those things that caused so much outrage they u-turned in days.
Seems to be the corporate disease of “if it might mean work for head office, don’t do it”. Hence a memo about the order in which onions are put on sausages might absolve corporate from responsibility.
They could just sweep the spilled food up if the seagulls don’t take it, but whatevs
I see the ADF is purchasing a Squadron’s worth 12- 16 of the Armed version of the General Atom Reaper UAV’s this mornings Oz paper. There was talk of buying these back in 2014 and confirmed in the 2016 Defence White Paper with the impression it at purchase to buy in the early 2020’s, so it makes me wonder why the sudden purchase of these units now?
A New Zealand actor reports, in a tone of high seriousness,
that Israelis see themselves as “an underdog.”
RNZ National, Wednesday 14 November 2018
We’ve dealt before with the contemptible phenomenon of glib and ignorant theatre “luvvies” sounding off about things they lack the competence to comment on. There was the pretentious “theatre-maker” Stella Duffy [1], there was the “sooooo truthful” Tandi Wright [2] and of course who could ever forget the epically pompous stand-up comedian Andrew Clay? [3]
Now, I must report sadly, I have identified another talkative but shallow member of this sorority of the second-rate, this club of the clueless, this brotherhood of the bewildered, this guild of the giddy and guileless, this [That’s enough epithets.—J.A. Napes]. About 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, as I steered the Breenmobile through the suburban dreamscapes of the North Shore, I chanced upon the actor Tim Balme being interviewed by that great gorgeous emptiness Jesse Mulligan. Amongst other things, Balme spoke about his play The Ballad of Jimmy Costello, which is based on the George Wilder story. He mentioned that he had performed it in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Speaking slowly and with as much gravitas as he could summon, Balme stated that Israeli audiences “loved it” because “it’s a play about an underdog, and Israel is a nation that considers itself an underdog.”
Israel “an underdog.” A nation that “considers itself an underdog.”
???????!!??!?!?
The absurdity, indeed the obscenity, of that propaganda seemed to be lost on Tim Balme, and of course it was lost on Jesse Mulligan.
“…. Israel is a nation that considers itself an underdog.”
When the privileged and powerful start making out, that they are the victim, everyone else is in danger.
The fascist rulers of Germany made big play of Germans being the underdog prior to WWII.
The White Minority government of South Africa also played the victim card.
And Trump also plays the, hard done by, victim card in appealing to his base.
All great lies have some truth, Germans suffered the unfairness of the reparations forced on them at the end of the First World War. When it was the German soldiery and sailors who mutinied that brought that brutal imperial conflict to an end.
The Boers painted themselves the victims of British imperialism.
And Trump’s supporters feel squeezed by the ‘elites’ (even though Trump is one of them).
And the present day Zionist rulers of the state of Israel use the excuse of the Holocaust inflicted on European Jews, by Germany, to carry out almost similar levels of repression and murder and dispossession against the Palestinian people.
Jenny, you may have confused Russia with Germany regarding the end of World War 1?
The collapse/rebellion in Germany was mainly civilian, not military. Some sailors joined a dockworkers’ rebellion, but by and large the German military forces, while being forced onto the retreat, were intact, not defeated, and still in French/Belgian territory.
This is why they later believed that they had been stabbed in the back, which helped Hitler.
More moronic comments from the mozz, of course Israel are the under dog. I do dispair with mozzies lack of cognitive reasoning making discourse pointless.
Kia ora Nation Simon & Emma The billion tree planting program from our Coalition Government is a good start but we need to invest more into climate change mitigation.
trump is a puppet his backers oil barons don’t want China’s manufacturing muscle to push oil into our history books as they will lose there control of the people on earth.
It was China that pushed the price of Solar down to a price that’s lower than thermal energy that is produced by coal and oil. China & Elon will push the petrol car into our history books and make energy democratic people producing there own power.
Ka kite ano. .
You see OUR Freedom and democracy is a illusion they keep most peoples reality in a big square box that the wealthy control the people on Mother Earth’s reality
Kia ora Newshub back with the moko’s lost track of time lets hope the The All Blacks test goes our way . The Black ferns Kia Kaha It’s awesome that the wahine World Cup is being hosted by Aotearoa I’m sure we will be good honest hoste . Ka pai to the young foot ball ferns .Looks like all the stories are about Jacinda trip overseas meeting other heads of state I will eaz on giving my of these people for the time being. Mike I read a story in Stuff on the reason why OUR weather is so variable at the minute after a long story the conclusion was human caused climate changes are the main causes
Ka Kite ano
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National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
Te Rangi e tu nei (The sky above us) Te Papa e takoto nei (The land beneath us) Tatou katoa te hunga ora (To us all the living) Tena koutou katoa (Greetings) ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babu’s humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The 2022 election brought the “teal wave” into parliament. The next election will test whether teals, who occupy what were Liberal seats, and other independents can maintain their momentum. Joining us on the Podcast ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide Pixavri/Shutterstock A major Federal Court class action has been dismissed this week after Justice Michael Lee ruled there was not enough evidence to prove the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer. Plaintiff Kelvin ...
In The Week in Politics: politicians have to decide what to do about child abuse, Health NZ is booked in for major surgery and Darleen Tana returns. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman – specifically a woman of colour, Vice President Kamala ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Bennett, PhD Student, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University Last week, a drone delivery company called Wing (owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet) started operating in Melbourne. Some 250,000 residents in parts of the city’s eastern suburbs can now order food from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Foo, Lecturer, Physiotherapy, Monash University pikselstock/Shutterstock In the next 40 years in Australia, it’s predicted the number of Australians aged 65 and over will more than double, while the number of people aged 85 and over will more than triple. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Grant, Research Associate, Power Institute for Arts and Visual Culture, University of Sydney Jonas Åkerström’s 1790 work, Session of the Accademia dell’Arcadia on August 17 1788.Nationalmuseum/Cecilia Heisser Ever wondered whether you’d have a better chance at winning an Olympic gold ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Jones, Program Lead, Food Governance, George Institute for Global Health wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock On Thursday, Australian and New Zealand food ministers at state, federal and national levels met to thrash out what’s next for health star ratings on packaged foods. Now, after ...
The Abuse in Care report found many Pacific survivors lost their connections to their culture and language, resulting in trauma that has been carried from generation to generation. ...
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because it’s not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...
Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori invites the current government to work in partnership with them to develop a pathway forward, including the development of a parallel pathway and meaningful policy and strategy for Kura Kaupapa Māori ...
If you haven’t started watching yet, Tara Ward begs you to reconsider. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. In the world of New Zealand reality television, we have many gems in our crown. There’s the delicious second season of the Celebrity Treasure ...
A new poem by Fiona Kidman. The clothes of the dead I did not keep my mother’s furry red beret for long nor the stringy scarves that adorned the necks of my aunts, although I have kept tag ends of gold, the rings and trinkets they wore, the brooches no ...
The government’s announcement that it will re-open the foreshore and seabed controversy by changing the rules on recognising centuries-old Māori customary title for a third time goes against the rule of law and New Zealand values,” Mr Tipa says. ...
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 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $25) Roarrrr! Perkins’ brilliant, award-winning, Marian-Keyes anointed, darkly funny, long ...
The 2004 Act vested ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the Crown, extinguishing any Māori claims to ownership and causing widespread outrage and protests among Māori communities. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antje Deckert, Associate Professor (Criminology), Auckland University of Technology Getty Images Despite the connection between institutional harm and gang membership made clear in this week’s mammoth royal commission abuse-in care report, the government seems unlikely to soften its “get tough on ...
From Lewis Clareburt in the swimming to the start of the rowing – the first seven days of Paris 2024 promise to be big for New Zealand. There are few events that bring the country together quite like an Olympic Games. Nothing quite matches the excitement of getting up in ...
Groundbreaking local science just showed up in the most surprising of places: the season finale of The Kardashians. In the season five finale of The Kardashians last night, several members of the family gathered together in one of their signature empty, cream-coloured rooms to hear test results that had been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University The Middle East is on the brink of a possibly devastating regional war, with hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah reaching an extremely dangerous level. Washington has engaged in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Elizabeth Eades, Rheumatologist, Monash University Lupus is an inflammatory autoimmune illness, where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks itself. Lupus can affect virtually any part of the body, although it most commonly affects the skin, joints and kidneys. The symptoms ...
A law firm that specialises in working with survivors of abuse in State care is disappointed that the Government fails to recognise that its boot camps can be directly compared to previous boot camps from the 1990s and 2000s. ...
Dying is a natural part of life, like updating your Wof or seeing your hairdresser, but without the word-of-mouth recs that help guarantee a good service. What if we changed that? Dying Reviews received by The Spinoff have had the names of organisations redacted while Hospice NZ collects further data. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Mike Lewinski/Flickr, CC BY On any clear night, if you gaze skywards long enough, chances are you’ll see a meteor streaking through the sky. Some nights, however, are better than others. At ...
Despite having no bars or other designated spaces for lesbians, Auckland boasts a small but mighty lesbian museum. So how did it get here? The past 18 months has brought increasing hostility towards the queer community across Aotearoa. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s anti-trans rally in Tamaki Makaurau last March led to a ...
Poneke Antifascist Coalition has invited Wellingtonians to stand in solidarity with the Kanak people at 12pm today outside the French Embassy in Wellington. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Layton, Visiting Fellow, Strategic Studies, Griffith University Drones are the signature technology of the Ukraine war. A few miniature aircraft designs were used in the war’s early days, but an incredible array of drones have now evolved. There are different types, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Slee, Associate Professor, Clinical Academic Neurologist, Flinders University Francisco Gonzelez/Unsplash Migraine is many things, but one thing it’s not is “just a headache”. “Migraine” comes from the Greek word “hemicrania”, referring to the common experience of migraine being predominantly ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lee White, Senior Lecturer and Horizon Fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney Australia was slow to introduce minimum building standards for energy efficiency. The Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) only came into force in 2003. Older homes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Sherwood, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney The past century of human-induced warming has increased rainfall variability over 75% of the Earth’s land area – particularly over Australia, Europe and eastern North America, new research shows. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Heynen, Program Coordinator, Sustainable Energy, The University of Queensland A temporary stadium in the Champ-de-Mars, ParisEkaterina Pokrovsky/Shutterstock As Paris prepares to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the sustainability of the event is coming under scrutiny. The organisers have promoted ...
A night of karaoke and community in a pub that feels like a memory. You’d barely even notice it, unless you knew to look. Tucked away behind a liquor store on busy Constable Street is the capital’s last great pub. Newtown Sports Bar is an emblem of the pub culture ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Wright, Professor in Marine Geology, University of Canterbury Louise Corcoran/Getty Images The decline in the number of doctoral candidates at New Zealand universities is a worrying sign for the country’s effort to build a knowledge-based economy. Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laurie Berg, Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney defotoberg/Shutterstock Migrant worker exploitation is entrenched in workplaces across Australia. Tragically, a deep fear of immigration consequences means most unlawful employer conduct goes unreported. On Wednesday, however, the government officially launched a ...
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Concerning news.
Good work by Matt Nippert.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12160570
Some background.
John Campbell takes the time to research in more depth.
+1 Ed – harassment, illegal activity like stealing data for foreign powers, (or worse) should NOT be acceptable in NZ and there should be a lot more resources on it.
We have had the French agents blowing up Rainbow Warrior, Isrealis stealing our passports and now Chinese agents apparently taking data/harrassment/stealing from NZ researchers and worse.
Is the Labour government going to say meh, or are they going to apprehend the perpetrators and prosecute them???? Considering the taxpayer funded budget of the SIS and GCSB you have to wonder how hard can it be and are they competent to do the job?
In addition NZ needs to step up with regards to espionage in NZ… look at the mess the Brits are in, when they are so internally focused they turn a blind eye to espionage in their own country. No wonder there are blatant assassinations going on around the world from foreign powers, as there as there does not seem much interest from governments in protecting citizens anymore.
Mysterious factory break-in raises suspicions about Chinese visit
“It was an unusual burglary, in which four or five laptops were stolen from a Scottish renewable energy manufacturer in the dead of a March night in 2011. So innovative was the company that it had been been visited by a 60-strong delegation led by China’s then vice-premier only two months before.
Nothing else was taken from the company and the crime, while irritating, went unsolved and forgotten – until a few years later pictures began emerging that showed a remarkably similar project manufactured in the world’s most populous country.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/10/mysterious-factory-break-in-raises-suspicions-about-chinese-visit
I’ve read that China’s acquisition of IP developed elsewhere is estimated as the largest transfer of wealth ever.
If you look at the R&D costs over time, resources, infrastructure, trial and error you’d skip its a staggering value in today’s currency they’ve bypassed.
The xian y-20 compared to the us c-17 being one the most blatant as they got sprung using a Canadian based expat to highlight the files/folders from compromised servers for lift and shift to China.
@TC, yep and use that money to buy up assets like significant amounts of NZ and OZ…
While the west politicians are getting selfies and self promoting in magazines and MSM or firing off on Twitter, the Chinese government are to be admired in a way as they steadily and carefully advancing their cause, gathering power and strategic assets, partnerships and soft power…
Natz can be bought for $100k, how cheap is that?
Sadly our government in NZ has become greedy and/or naive self promoters hoping for a crust of bread and a pat on the head, as 30 years post Rogernomics our politicians and the general discourse being promoted is that Kiwis are only good at Rugby and a few other sports and incapable of self governing, working or running our own businesses, assets or countries successfully.
So very easy for the Chinese to step in to help, self govern NZ and their businesses and assets in the face of greed, disinterest and brainwashing of the NZ political elite and MSM.
We have also given up our security to others in particular the US in real terms and so now at the mercy of others.
There is a difference between collaboration/friendship and throwing your hands up and leaving it all up to other governments and paper agreements to decide your future and fate and NZ seems to be erring on the lazy second option with no plan B of self management.
Don’t blame them actually. Most US patents are not innovation, just blatant privatisation of others ideas. Parenting rounded corners on a cell phone. FFS.
Rentier capitalism at it’s worse.
US prosperity begins, by ignoring all previous British property rights.
All indications are that they’re going to say ‘meh’ so as to keep up Fonterra’s exports. Apparently maintaining NZ for NZers under NZ control comes a distant second to that.
It occurs to me that Ed is continually bringing up foreign problems and ctiticising the USA and China etc. Whereas I want to see this blog continue and look at what is happening here. If Ed steps on enough toes and makes enough wild assertions about the large dominating foreign powers, it takes time away from us. If it incurs enough wrath Ed’s stuff alone could make it a likely target to be taken to court or closed down.
And groups can get infiltrated; we have wondered who is behind these extra right regulars. There is something driven about them, and the same could apply to those supposedly speaking for the left. I’m just a concerned left-leaning twit myself. I wonder about Ed and others.
I write on many New Zealand issues.
Inequality
Poverty
Dairy farming
Spying
Housing
Socialism
The environment
The NZ media
NZ banking…..
There are parallels.
We know that the previous National government pretty much copied social policy from the UK and that they copied charter schools from the US. So, seeing what’s happening to them can give us an idea of the damages that National will do next time they’re in power.
Ed does not need this unwarranted atrack grey. Ed is a driving force behind conversation topics on this blog.
Yes maui that’s my point. Why are you not interested in NZ?
The National Party should be investigated as their deep ties look dodgy.
“anti-Chinese sons of bitches”
This is normal for anyone who dares to criticize the new Mao, Chairman Xi. My main reading is Chinese web news sites in NZ. This is mild compared to everyday comments in Chinese language media. ANY opposing view that even slightly is against Community Party views is considered as being traitor. Yet many on this blog say how great China system is! It is not!
I am called a traitor to China by my own family and Chinese friends in NZ as I am in the process of applying for NZ Citizenship. This is what the Community Party has done to the people in my country.
Thank you for your brave words. The CCCP is indeed a soft tyranny of a nature the western world struggles to understand properly.
My only small objection is that I do not think a majority of us here are admirers of the Chinese regime and it’s expansionist ambitions. Most of us loath empire wherever it appears.
Yes, China is an empire, although few Kiwis see that. Mr Xi is step by step becoming Mao. The ‘Thoughts of Chairman Xi’ is now a reality that rivals the ‘Thoughts of Chairman Mao’. Unlimited term as leader. Increased censorship. Imprisonment and ‘re-education’ of Uyghurs. But in China most people support him still. Economically very good.
Forced abortion when already have one child was common 20 years ago. When I studied nursing, the man on the autopsy table was a criminal, a bullet hole clearly in his forehead. We thought this was right, but it is not. Bribery to get into hospital – yes this is the great Community Party state that so many Kiwis still think is a utopia. There are many things that were and in many parts of China, especially local places, are pure evil. But this was all we knew. Young Chinese people very very different. The future for China will be interesting I think.
How else would you describe private health insurance in NZ? It gets some people in front of the same doctors earlier.
Yes that is true, but in China even an emergency, life in danger, in many places you will not even get admitted to hospital. This is very true. And drugs you must pay for. In NZ, I do not have health insurance or my son, yet we get a higher level of care than in China.
In 2016, I spent 4 months in China. My son had been injured in an accident. His father and I paid for pain relief and antibiotics. NZ not that bad!
China appears to have adopted the worst aspects of authoritarian socialism and capitalist meanness.
Yep. We have been colonised by Britain, the USA and looks like, now China.
Time we were independent!
I haven’t noticed commentators here saying “how great China system is!” I’ve seen some (including myself) criticising it. Polarising into a simple binary view of anything is usually too simple-minded – those who do so lose accuracy in their description. Any political system will have pros & cons. I agree that the international community has been too tolerant of the endemic misbehaviour of the regime for far too long.
I’m reading a recent acquisition: Everything Under The Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power, which I recommend to anyone interested in the current regime’s foreign policy. See https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Under-Heavens-Chinas-Global/dp/0385353324
As far as your relations are concerned, it may help to frame things in generic terms – the future for China will require adaption to a common-interest framework. National self-interest therefore must be balanced by acknowledgment of the interests of other nations. In respect of China’s attempt to reassert their regional hegemony, we can expect all other nations affected to align in consensus to oppose such re-emergence of imperialism. A balance of equal and opposite forces is therefore eventually inevitable. Naive expectations of success will be replaced by realism. In the interim, any delusional thinking by decision-makers is dangerous…
Yes Chinese political system was necessary for our recent decades of rapid growth. We all pulled in the same direction. No serious opposition was allowed. But now it is still the same, yet the need is no longer there.
You mention my relations, no! Older than me and have never left China, so still have Maos isolationist view of the world.
The biggest challenges for China in the years ahead are the young people, who travel. And the looming huge problem of Xinjiang. And Xizang.
[citation needed]
Welcome to being a NZer.
The people of China could stop them if they so wished.
@Fang Zhou – some Kiwis are worried about the Chinese government too, so even if it seems that people might sound anti Chinese be aware most of the time it is directed against the CCP getting a stranglehold into NZ not against Chinese people and also the worry that Chinese residents might be pressured to work for the Chinese government interests even if they didn’t want to on foreign soil, so great might be influence be as our government and industry is asleep at the wheel.
Hey,
To be fair to the TS, I have not seen anyone say they want the Chinese system. But they do want a return to authoritarian govt control, which could be interrupted as wanting the Chinese system.
A small number on the extreme Left want a authoritarian govt that own pretty much everything. (banks, insurance, utilities, Supermarkets, etc) I think but stand to be corrected that someone wrote that if a person invents something or has a innovative idea they shouldn’t own it but it becomes the property of the state and the people.
Much like what you have in China with the control of central govt over most things and most Chinese corps having some level of govt ownership or control.
China bans facebook and a number of other social sites and developed its own wechat and weibo that can be monitored.
Now we see millions of cameras, name and shame in papers and Huge LED screens around the cities highlighting wrong doing of citizens in real time for example j walking and social credit points for citizens.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2157883/drones-facial-recognition-and-social-credit-system-10-ways-china
One link but the social credit and city surveillance is scary, but it is how an authoritarian govt maintains control.
Opposing views are not allowed.
Those that want the govt controlled utopia then also accept they will loose freedoms and free speech as the govt controls the narrative.
I don’t see many on here that want a “Government controlled utopia”. Even the most ardent anti-capitalists still want a democratic Government. Many of the right wingers are open to increased democracy, also.
Government by us.
As for the State owning banks and utilities. When it is a real democratic State it is all of us that own them.
Ownership of patents and innovations very rarely accrues to the innovator. Usually they are acquired by a corporation which uses then for unearned rent for ridiculous lengths of time. Amazons book rights, for example.
You are confusing Democratic ownership with an authoritarian State. At the moment we have an Authoritarian State controlled by corporate donations and influence. And, I suspect, with considerable evidence, a lot of power exerted covertly by the US, Chinese and British Governments. Often in behalf of their corporations.
Good comment – in the long term CCP influence over the NZ Chinese community does not bode well for how that community is perceived by the wider population.
Two refugees here have been renditioned back to Saudi Arabia – in 2013 and 2014.
http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2018/10/reminder-saudi-arabia-kidnapped-people.html
Here’s some interesting information on China and I’m a little concerned at was has happened, but not surprised IRT Professor Brady as the same thing happened to Clive Hamilton when he was trying to get his book published called “The Silent Invasion”.
Sorry for the double post, can the mods please delete post 1.4
Here’s some interesting information on China and I’m a little concerned at was has happened, but not surprised IRT Professor Brady as the same thing happened to Clive Hamilton when he was trying to get his book published called “The Silent Invasion
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-16/are-china-cheap-loans-to-poor-nations-a-debt-trap/10493286”.
The U.S.A.
A rogue state.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/14/us-has-spent-5point9-trillion-on-middle-east-asia-wars-since-2001-study.html?__source=sharebar|twitter&par=sharebar
Interesting angle from Jeffrey Kaye on the killing of Khashoggi.
Fascinating.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/north-africa-west-asia/nafeez-ahmed/did-us-and-britain-collude-in-murder-of-jamal-khashoggi
Ed did you catch the live presser from the Saudi’s last night? The story re Khashoggi changes so much.
He say’s he’s seeking the death penalty for some involved, but does not want to name them.
It’s a big freaking coverup, Saudis are good at that.
Cheers for the links above, will have a watch over the weekend. Much appreciated.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/11/saudi-top-prosecutor-seeks-death-penalty-khashoggi-murder-181115103958916.html
It’s the facts they’ve agreed too though. That a official signed off on a warrant for K. That they wanted to rendition K. That they targeted K when he sought a marriage licence, thus attacking the ability to legally start a family, nasty.So who paid for the flights. Who told the embassy to stock up on plastic sheets. Sorry but I can’t believe that a they got the go head without serious authority being involved, and that’s before you consider who was most irate and irritated by K. The idea that S.A. will walk away thinking people global don’t now know what they do in their embassies, that we all now sanction by allow those embassies on our soil. And then it gets worse, not only attacking the family of K, his future family, not only renditioning him, or murdering premeditively, but he was a top journalist resident of the USA. Their is serious no way Trump can stop action. So their laughable fake news conference, that only exposes a whole new raft of questions while reinforcing the view that a whitewash was in train, a whitewash protecting a ruthless man. And who could that be, the leprosy of Qatar, the evil in Yeman, and the how dare he get married. If the US does continue to dither, then its even worse, the moral ethical outrage, of the holy land for Islam, coupled to K, coupled to Israel new US embassy… …And then add the explosive that wars mean men don’t come home, mean four wives… …it’s not to hard to see soldiers getting fessup of being fodder, realizing their job actually is to die so their betters can have a extra wife.
If I were a progressive S.A. leader, I’d end multiple wives, pull out of Yeman, reengage Qatar… get Trump to backtrack on embassy… but all we get is dangerous dithering from Ryad.
The corrupt, no matter their country of origin, always think that they are because they think that they’re better, more intelligent than anyone else.
Good linkies this morning Ed. 😛
Did anyone catch the NZ Music Awards last night?
Upper Hutt Posse, their frontman Dean Hapeta, at the end of his speech called out ‘Free Palestine’ condemned trump and called out government for sending our troops to fight fake wars over oil among other political messages.
Much respect to them for speaking up.
Dean has never been afraid to speak his mind, “E Tu” & the Dam Native years all righteous stuff. Now await the vitriol coz a brown guy dare speak his truth…
Was so awesome to hear his words, felt very proud of him for speaking the truth.
Miss almost 14 had plenty of questions afterwards (she stayed up late to watch), was happy to answer them.
Lyrics about reality rather than money and sex, we need more lyrical reality, kudos to all who use a platform to speak up and inform others.
Those names are a blast from the past.
I loved the first two upper hutt posse albums.
Cheers student radio.
Well ahead of its time, preceeding rage against the machine with the fusion of rock, rap and injustice.
The message was spot on although some stuff was hard to hear through pakeha ears.
This bit G…. “The message was spot on although some stuff was hard to hear through pakeha ears” well said.
Can you just clarify for me what wars we currently have troops fighting in? Motivation aside I can’t think of any current deployments that involve combat troops.
Hey Crashcart,
Government over the years and decades have sent troops to locations in the middle east to assist the USA lead wars. Which more often than not have one thing in common, oil. Peace isn’t profitable.
Pretty sure the speech made referenced Afghanistan.
Wonder if there is a clip of the full speech. The political part is at the end of the speech, will see if I can find later,
I think the question was ‘what wars we currently have troops fighting in’?
I have lost touch too Crashcart. Our Radionz news is full of what is happening in the USA but I don’t think we have any action within that country thank goodness. But elsewhere? What do the military buffs know?
seems to be a vaguely current list.
Might not include special forces deployments though
@ grey: Just as MoBIE, MSD and others in gubbamint are concerned , AND in the interests of ‘open gubbamint’ (going forward), [Maybe, oneday lprent could give us his impressions and experiences on a thread we could call ‘technophobia’]
Maybe the NZDF might care to publish their activities (across the 3 – almy, navvie and ear force), and with all due deference (to ‘the 5’) on a website.
With a cuzzie that once served in ‘peace keeping’ in the Sinai, and Singapore, and in the spooks for a quite a while thereafter till the alcopops and the liver got the better of him, I’ve also lost track
It does seem reasonable though that they could keep all the plebs appraised of their activities (all within the bounds of keeping shit secret in our Neshnool interest)
I’ve lost touch too both @ Crashcart and @Grey[non]warshark – not that I ever wanted to have such ‘touch’ in the first place.
I did appreciate however being told not to go near a Bainimarama’s Fiji a decade ago – based on the passport I held at the time. As it happens ,it now makes me even more cynical about various ‘competencies’ in our public service – the silos, the politicisation, the egos, the incompetencies, the agendas, the conflicted interests ……
Yes, going off at a tangent here, again, I thought about our police and how they wouldn’t venture into Pike mine at the beginning and now they are playing it safe again. And how much grief and extra cost that has caused. And they wouldn’t provide backup when trained miners wanted to make a series of reccies.
Thinks, would the Thai cave success be equalled if it happened here? Of course it isn’t the same as Pike because there may be a case to be heard in Court. That would have eaten a large part of the police and justice budget allocation. I wonder if the departments were under instruction to curb their enthusiasm?
/Agreed.
(At the time, and probably/possibly still), completely the wrong agency to have been leading any rescue effort. Peter Cowan – nice enough bloke and all that, and a good cop, but in that situation, out of his depth and encumbered with the wrong sort of mission.
I think the decision not to go ahead with attempting a rescue of miners who were almost certainly dead, risking a lot more deaths, was the correct one.
I doubt that the police made the decision without expert advice.
Talking to one of the mine rescuers afterwards. He said the police probably saved his life, restraining them from rushing in.
Certainly it is unfair to judge the person who had to make that sort of decision in the moment, with the information available at the time, using information they didn’t have.
The picture of men, waiting for a rescue that didn’t come, is a powerful one. But the ones in charge had to weigh up the real risk to rescuers, against the, slight, possibility of survivors.
Not a decision I would like to have to make. Though I am aware it may happen.
Link…
https://www.threenow.co.nz/shows/2018-vodafone-new-zealand-music-awards/2018-vodafone-new-zealand-music-awards/S1825-116/M26539-595
Political part of the speech at 1:43.50 – 1:45.10
Text below…
“Free Palestine!
And where’s that PM even if it was a fake acting one up here. I’ve got some words for you.
All of our armed forces and military that have been fighting in these fake wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for oil, for USA imperialism; get out of there!
What you need to be doing is going to Palestine to fight against the racist terrorism of the Israeli State, that’s where all of our fighting energy needs to be.
And also, even more, death to the Mexican USA border and defend that caravan of indigenous people seeking refugee status at the United Snakes of America kkk.
They are seeking refuge because their countries have been wrecked by that colonial power known as the USA.
Death to all oppressors.”
Oh I must add when he refers to the PM as a fake one acting, that’s the lady from Jono & Ben who impersonates Jacinda.
Our Jacinda has willingly been involved in a few very good skits with her, including one last night on Jono & Ben.
Anyways she presented an award at the NZMA last night dressed up as Jacinda 🙂
It’s wasn’t a dig at our PM being fake.
Felt I needed to add that context, for those who didn’t see the full NZ Music Awards show last night.
The largest current deployment by far is the training team in Iraq (over 150). Just renewed by the current govt for another 12 months.
All about training Iraqi forces to defeat ISIS.
If you think ISIS should not be opposed (with military force) well that’s your view. But obviously Jacinda et al do not share that view.
“If you think ISIS should not be opposed (with military force) well that’s your view. But obviously Jacinda et al do not share that view.”
Importantly, what is the majority of Kiwis view…..or is that of no consequence?
I am pretty sure the majority of New Zealanders would think ISIS has to be militarily opposed and that NZ should, at least to some extent, be part of the international coalition. The training team was probably the right level of commitment. There were polls on thiols at the time of the initial deployment when John Key was PM which showed clear support.
I was actually surprised that Jacinda and the Cabinet renewed the mandate for another 12 months. After all, ISIS has largely been defeated in Iraq. So presumably it was about NZ showing our partners that we are a reliable partner, notwithstanding the change of government.
Dean Hapeta at the Music awards would well have represented the Green Party view (and the left of Labour) but it is a minority view.
“I am pretty sure the majority of New Zealanders would think ISIS has to be militarily opposed and that NZ should, at least to some extent, be part of the international coalition. ”
And that is based on what? Polling, focus group, personal preference?
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2018/09/17/240869/nzs-mission-creep-in-iraq-creeps-on
“It was a decision that surprised Victoria University professor of strategic studies Robert Ayson, who believed there was good reason for a withdrawal from Iraq, given Isis was “no longer the battleground force it once was”.
“You need a compelling reason in Iraq to stay, and I’m not entirely sure that is there, so I think that now would have been a time to say, ‘Right, we’ve done what we said we were there to do’.”
Pat,
My recollection is at the time of the initial deployment the public polls were clearly in favour.
As for the current extension, I essentially said what Dr Ayson said. But that is not the only consideration for the extension of the deployment. NZ does not like to be the first out of an international coalition, and that is pretty much what we would have been.
I suspect the Govt thought the deployment was sufficiently Ok that the extension would not to cause any significant local reaction. And they were right. It didn’t.
I may be doing you a disservice but I suspect your claim that it was an acceptance of the majority view that was the deciding factor in the deployment decision was more a case of wishful thinking rather than any knowledge of such.
Anything to do with the, almost, total lack of information on troop deployments from our news media.
So much so, that we learn about them first through the Ozzie papers.
And the constant propaganda about big bad Iraq. Which was OK until they threatened the petrodollar. Like Libya. And indeed, Iran’s Government in the 50’s. Too Democratic for the Western powers, replaced by the Shar, and Savak.
IsIs could re-emerge any time, last time the US pulled back that’s when they got a foot hold.
I doubt even you still believe the fable which is , ISIS…
You realise the US funded ISIS in Syria?
To begin with they also funded the mujahadeen.
This was to try and save putting soldiers on the ground.
The purpose to overthrow despot rigimes in both cases costly mistakes!
Reminds me of Auckland (and maybe Christchurch)
“Vanity projects and kamikaze loggias: Tbilisi’s architectural disaster
The centre of the Georgian capital has long been the plaything of outsize egos – but can its architecture biennial inspire useful debate about the city’s future?
Joseph Alexander Smith, a Briton who has lived in Tbilisi for the last six years, was driven by what he witnessed to stand for local election last year on a platform of environmental activism, campaigning against chronic traffic problems, pollution and the unabated development that has blighted much of the city. “We have lost one of the city’s oldest streets, Mirza Shafi,” he says, “and now developers are hand-in-glove with politicians, intent on destroying everything that is left. Everyone has a right to air, not just the right to breath clean air, but to look out of their window and not be confronted by the concrete wall of a new illegal building.”
Is this going to be Phil Goff, John Key, Brownlee’s fate…. exile with criminal charges for corruption and in NZ case, gross stupidity as well???
“Saakashvili behaved like a king, just picking his favourites with no competition or discussion,” says Zhvania. “He dismissed any opposition voices as retrogrades, standing in the way of modernisation.”
The former president may now be living in exile in the Netherlands, wanted on multiple criminal charges back home, but his physical legacy is still very much felt – and others have eagerly picked up where he left off.”
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/nov/15/vanity-projects-and-kamikaze-loggias-tbilisi-architectural-disaster
Is there a connection with Chris Trotters latests musing?
https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/2018/11/communication-breakdown.html
“Why? Because the council officials understood that a councillor’s reputation was built upon his or her ability to get things done for the people who voted them into office. Repeated failure to fix their problems would very soon lead to gripes about Councillor So-and-So being “useless”. The slightest whisper that such an opinion was abroad in the electorate would have the impugned councillor knocking very loudly on the door of the Town Clerk, demanding to know what the hell was going on. That’s why action almost always followed.”
+1 Pat & agree with Chris Trotter
“Councillors are reduced to a browbeaten collection of rubber-stampers: prey to private sector contractors, condescending legal advisers, and over-mighty CEOs. The final indignity being that, having signed up to the Councillors’ Code of Conduct, these poor souls are forbidden from speaking out angrily, or publicly, about their powerlessness.”
I think in Phil Goff’s case, he is being used by the CEO and private sector to be a front man on the attack against local government and democracy. How else do you fathom taking off 2 elected councillors from Auckland Transport (that gets the lions share of ratepayers rates, but has a poor and dismal service record)?
A continuation of the observation that the vast majority of voices are increasingly ignored in western democracies…..and we wonder why ‘populism’ gains currency.
The establishment brings it upon itself and only they can solve it.
When less than 50% of voters bother to vote this happens.
Then people moan endlessly but go out and drum up support for representation on council no!
You get what you don’t vote for the status quo!
Skippy’s public service reform should extend to local bodies.
Never was that being ‘forbidden from speaking out’ about what is best described as muppetry more evident in Wellington recently in a Simon Wolf – Lavery exchange.
It’s a case of ‘officials’ throwing elected representatives ‘under a bus’ if anything.
And even when those ‘officials’ are legally in the wrong, they’re apt to push things to the limit, often in the knowledge that people don’t have the resources to face them off.
On a lighter note:
A Tui in my street has learned the sound of a computer booting up.
It has confused several of us thinking our machines are turning themselves on, or have been hacked, or….
It’s a juvenile Tui sitting on a powerpole, laughing at us the little blighter…
When they learn the telephone ring it is a real pain.
Someone near me must get a hell of a lot of texts. There’s at least of couple of tuis doing the Samsung default alert, and a few years ago they were doing the Nokia alert.
Looks like service is already declining, tired of public services being cut or not funded appropriately for population and tourist growth that the government is so keen on, while our taxes are used to further private profits that are publicly funded!
Urgent answers needed after rescue helicopter unavailable
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1811/S00167/urgent-answers-needed-after-rescue-helicopter-unavailable.htm
How come these communicators with the public can lie and never get called out on it? They need to be confronted, their organisation which is probably contracted to do government work, at their profit, should be exposed and tarred and feathered or made to walk through the streets with their trousers down looking stupid.
Brazilian military now taking over all the major roles in the Brazilian government. The US has been backing the coup with US, European and Brazilian corporates benefiting.
“I think what we are seeing is a massive transfer of Brazil’s natural resources to the north right now. Brazil is one of the richest countries in the world in terms of natural resources.Its petroleum, its minerals, its gold, its fresh water – they are talking about privatising the world’s largest acquifier to Coca Cola right now.”
How shameful “privatising the world’s largest acquifier to Coca Cola right now’
pity Jacinda is not using her status to question the fairness of bad deals and public asset transfer to private business, rather than actually promoting the practise of ‘FREE trade’ around the world. How bout they rebrand to FREEBIE trade agreements, it would be kinder and more honest.
Tellingly even with the excitement when apparently Mike Pence wanted to sit next to Arden, did she use the moment to discuss her supposedly nuclear free moment of climate change or urge US to uphold the Paris agreement and help the environment, nope instead it is reported that she focused on unsuccessfully pressing New Zealand’s case for an exemption on US tariffs on steel and aluminium which are mostly foreign owned multinational companies.
So who would even benefit from the lift of US tariffs on steel and aluminium – well mostly the profits of overseas firms.
Who owns NZ steel, well BHP, formerly known as BHP Billiton, is the trading entity of BHP Billiton Limited and BHP Billiton plc, an Anglo-Australian multinational mining, metals and petroleum dual-listed public company headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia and owns significant amounts of the formally known New Zealand Steel.
The raw material for NZ steel is ironsand which is disappearing fast around the world and can not be replaced and has virtually zero studies on the long term effects on the eco systems.
The future of sand mining in NZ
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/104065329/the-future-of-sand-mining-in-nz
Who owns NZ Aluminimum, NZAS is 79.36 per cent owned by Pacific Aluminium which in turn is owned by Rio Tinto Group an Anglo-Australian multinational and one of the world’s largest metals and mining corporations and 20.64 per cent owned by Japan’s Sumitomo Chemical Company.
So when our politicians have the ear of world leaders are they really thinking of the people of NZ or international peace and well being and climate change and environmental issues, or just promoting the short term profiteering of multinational big business???
It seems clear to me where Labour’s focus is, either intentionally or unintentionally!
OMG. The face behind the Trump variety performance.
Collective bargaining works! Funny we all happy when sports people do it – but outside of a few select sectors how many people are organised collectively?
http://www.afl.com.au/news/2018-11-15/aflw-player-wages-to-rise-finals-prize-money-introduced
I’d add this is the third pay raise over three years, each year these players are getting substantially more.
In more union news.
Big ups to the truckers in Iran. This is the second round of strikes and after the government arrested some of these same protestors – it takes real guts (unlike fake ponytail pulling guts) to carry on a strike in the face of a government used to suppressing working people.
https://libcom.org/news/iww-statement-solidarity-striking-workers-iran-14112018
Maine has its first taste of ranked choice voting for US House seats. On election night, the incumbent Repug won a plurality of first choice votes, but second (and maybe third) choices tipped it to the Dem. So naturally the loser Repug is suing.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/15/politics/democrats-maine-house-ranked-choice-jared-golden/index.html
Ranked choice is slowly spreading to other states as well. So despite all the crap around gerrymandering, voter suppression and loads of other noxious anti-democracy actions, there are still some pockets of progress towards better democracy in the US.
https://thinkprogress.org/utah-cities-ranked-choice-pilot-program-2fec6e710064/
Yep. There, here, and everywhere.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/15/steve-bannon-oxford-union
“Chinese speaking buyers offered first dibs on ‘top secret’ luxury apartment planned for Auckland
A “top secret” 24-storey luxury apartment tower planned for Auckland’s North Harbour has been snapped up by exclusive buyers months before the public gets a look in.
The 72.5 metre apartment planned for Kaipiho Lane, Albany will feature more than 280 apartments, 11 lifts, a helicopter landing pad, residents’ cinema, swimming pool, clubhouse, ballroom, 24 hour concierge and robotic valet parking.
A website marketing the development in Chinese, http://www.kaipiho.co.nz, said the apartments “caused a subscription frenzy” when they were promoted on Chinese social media app WeChat.:
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/11/16/investigation-into-sabotage-of-academics-car-must-finally-start-demanding-answers-about-chinese-influence-in-nz/
P>S> clearly the government and councils measures to curb the housing shortages futile as seen in this example, but actually creating more poverty for Kiwis who end up subsidising the roads, congestion, Leaks, public transport, pollution etc that all these new developments for speculators who don’t even live here, are generating.
Chinese people want to get their money out of China and into gold bricks before their currency devalues or worse they take down the banks with lending, Kiwi housing investments should not be part of the solution of cash China 1.5 billion people, because our people and environment is the casualty of poor risk planning as is more exposure ‘If China Sneezes Will the Rest of the World Catch a Cold”.
And there aren’t even jobs for car valets. Perhaps someone will be able to hack their garage systems and send cars to be parked outside, or go to be serviced or such like. Just annoying glitches. We have plenty of those in NZ and would love to share them around.
I think you do not understand that whether you like it or not, NZ needs Chinese capital to flow in to correct balance of payments and keep Kiwi dollar high. Most Chinese property owners are resident in NZ, at least most of the time. We are a positive contribution to NZ, yet you paint us as fleeing China before the currency collapses. Maybe you should learn more about China and spend an extended period there before you preach the collapse of the Yuan.
Most Kiwis are concerned about the corruption which comes along with that Chinese capital.
Yes, corruption is sadly still normal in China, and at all levels. However, the younger Chinese not so much. But you seem to assume that the capital coming in to NZ is from corruption. This is, to me, if that is your thinking, not only wrong but racist wrong.
Many Chinese people are extremely wealthy not from corruption, but from riding the rapid growth of China economy. Look at Jack Ma, now one of the wealthiest men in the world. Not from corruption, but from business. There are 1.4 billion Chinese in China. 1 in 25 people in the world live within China’s borders. There are many many little Mr Ma’s, not wealthy from corruption but from hard work and smart work. Many of these want a better life in NZ, and many share their time between China and NZ, but invest in NZ and run business in China. This is good for NZ.
Please do not think all Chinese rich people are corrupt. They are not.
@Fang Zhou,
“Please do not think all Chinese rich people are corrupt. They are not.”
I don’t think all Chinese are corrupt, what is wrong with NZ is our NZ immigration policy is so pathetic and the criteria is not robust that our government has been bringing in all types of migrants or migrant workers who are corrupt, dishonest and liars, and they when they find out that they are all of that, they just let them stay here… all the while when we could have a robust policy to attract the best migrants here who could make a greater difference…
I don’t blame the Chinese, because it is not the Chinese fault that NZ government is stupid and does not discriminate against honest and dishonest people who come to NZ to live, work or study.
Should be, commit a crime in NZ, lie on your immigration forms or are found guilty of corruption and you are straight out the door and never to be allowed back into NZ whether you are Chinese, Korean, English, EU, Indian, or Russian or what have you. Not a ethnic based policy but a moral one.
Due to the isolation of NZ and our lack of robust immigration measures we do seem to attract our fair share of criminals trying to hide out here, or commit identity theft.
I didn’t say ‘the capital coming into NZ is from corruption’. I said corruption comes with the capital.
The other thing about Chinese wealth is the conditions under which it has been generated. Scant regard for human rights, political rights, worker rights, justice, and the environment has been the foundation upon which the Chinese capitalist economy has grown at such a fast pace.
You might have realised you are commenting on a forum which is inspired by the labour movement and so worker rights, and recently the environment, are high on most commenters’ list of priorities. I doubt whether a forum like The Standard would exist for very long in China and so when I look at the huge increase in wealth in that country I see it as tainted by injustice. You won’t find the same concerns on NZ blogs from the other side of the political divide.
Now, you might say it is the West’s consumerism which has partially funded the explosion of wealth in China and you would be right. I buy ‘made in China’ – it is difficult to not – so I too am guilty in a sense.
There will no doubt be some very good people emigrating to New Zealand but there will be a significant trail of corruption also and that is why we must ask questions, review settings, and be watchful.
You are right: The Standard (or any non-government blog) would not last very long in China.
And yes, I do realise I am commentating on a forum inspired by the labour movement. I also support that, but that does not mean blindly! A wrong by a socialist is just as bad as a wrong by a capitalist. Maybe worse, as the capitalist does not pretend what their motivation is.
The corruption I would disagree. In my experience, most Chinese coming here are reasonably young and well educated. They have experienced corruption throughout their life and do not like it. The money, including the big money that comes with them, is I think untouched.
Of more concern to NZ should be not the Chinese money coming to NZ, but rather when Kiwi engage in big business in China. It is inconceivable to me that Kiwirail or Fonterra are untouched by this. To do business in China at that level, well, I will not say the rest but you I am sure understand.
The other area of great concern to NZ should be immigration. I would suggest that almost EVERY Chinese that immigrates has been a party to corruption during the immigration process.
I totally welcome you.
Plenty on the left still mistrust Chinese – even after Helen Clark’s apology for decades of racism.
I don’t trust the Chinese government.
But then we’ve never examined US spying here, or British.
We’re a different people since the 1970s and thank God for that.
Most Chinese do not trust the Chinese government! Mr Xi is good for China economically, but he is slowly becoming little Mao.
Agreed.
Mr Xi is getting far too authoritarian.
@Fang Zhou. It’s the market driven flow of capital and being at the mercy of that capital and bad foreign decisions (ak BNZ floating and having to bail them out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_New_Zealand) that has caused the biggest crashes and poverty in NZ..
the Chinese situation will be exactly the same but worse as NZ has created too much dependancy on both Chinese investment and US security decisions.
Sadly the dominant discourse in NZ is neoliberalism and the pursuit of money, making our government decisions short term, lazy and stupid and allowed too much dependancy on other countries.
I think NZ and China should be friends but NZ becoming dependant on them for investment is a complete mistake.
As for high dollar in NZ, causes people living and working here huge problems, much higher mortgages and lending, less money from exports. Cheaper imports.
Kiwirail buys locomotives from Dailian. These are now much cheaper. High dollar both good and bad I think. But I admit economics is not my strength.
Yep they still do buy those locomotives. They may be cheap but we used to value quality and safety in NZ over money…
KiwiRail withdraws 40 trains from service after asbestos discovered in paint
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-01/kiwirail-pulls-40-trains-after-asbestos-discovery/5292902
“I think you do not understand that whether you like it or not, NZ needs Chinese capital to flow in to correct balance of payments and keep Kiwi dollar high. ”
I don’t know why you should think that. Even if it has been true in specific circumstances at one time, I do not see any need to favour Chinese capital over other capital, but it is also a destructive goal to set long term – if we need capital from immigrants, what does that tell you about wealth inequality within our country – and why wold an immigrant was to enter a country that requires immigrants to purchase capital assets to survive?
Far better that we fix some of the inequalities that currently plague us, that we develop domestic-owned enterprises to force competition on foreign owned companies (banks may be a good start), and recognise that we need to look after our population and leave them a country worth living, working and staying in – regardless of where they come from.
Sorry my bad explaining I think. No, should not favour Chinese capital over capital from elsewhere, but NZ needs capital inflow, regardless of where it comes from. Chinese invest heavily in NZ, certainly compared to many other immigrant groups. And yes, that can push up property prices but also many many Chinese build houses and buy businesses, and that provides work and increases the housing pool. And GST paid and so on.
Chinese, and others, wish to enter NZ as it is a better life here. Despite what many seem to think, the standard of living is about the same for the average person, but quality of life here is much higher.
Yes, I agree with you regarding NZ owned enterprises, looking after the NZ population. Do you not think though that I, coming here and, when I first arrived, buying a business was not also indirectly looking after the NZ population? I paid taxes, employed two part-timers.
It is not that I disagree with you, but ‘how’. Many immigrants just get on with it. Work long hours and invest in the next generation. Kiwi people work hard, but seem to prefer to be employees rather than take risks. Immigrants often have no choice but to risk everything (we did that by coming here!). So we invest, we buy businesses, we try harder. I know that is a generalisation, but that is my experience.
It’s interesting you object to a generalisation by making a generalisation about Kiwis preferring to be employees – none of our family are and are in a quite wide set of infrastructure and construction businesses. Years of long hard earned reputation and resilience has meant we have survived in the face of being undercut on prices and lower standards, some have not. That’s not some prejudiced “opinion”, it’s based on factual events and is something that is sad when it happen. Something NZ should be able to work for as it did historically is to uplift the conditions and prospects of NZers not have that regress by being damned into working longer hours or under conditions that are any longer than what is necessary to get the work done and get it done right and for a fair price.
Immigrants have seed capital. Being the more wealthy in China.
Kiwi’s do not. After decades of high living costs and low wages.
Being an employee is not a choice.
Agree that many Chinese people are not their Government.
However our dollar is too high. One of the reasons for China’s recent economic ascendancy, is their Government deliberately keeps their currency low, encouraging exports and discouraging imports, into China.
I don’t think pushing house prices up beyound the reach of locals is a positive contribution to New Zealand. And it is USA’ians, British and South Africans, as well as Chinese. Any more than the British wealthy in, Spain hogging all the coastal real estate.
Pardon my ignorance, but Robotic valet parking? WTF?
It is very common in cities with limited space you can store large numbers of cars within a small space.
Effectively you pull into garage onto a parking pad, hop out and the system lifts then moves the pad to a vertical storage space.
There is NOT little robots running around parking cars.
@ Monty, many thanks for that info. I have never heard the term “Robotic Parking” before, so as a result, my decrepit old brain went into overdrive (no pun intended) 🙂
Chinese property investment abroad is a diversification, risk managemrnt, as the domestic market may be in slow down (over supply).
The current or future value of the yuan would have little to do with it.
The development you mention, use of land for property to people not currently residents, shows what the governments relaxation of the its new rules for foreign purchase leads to.
I think the Chinese preference to invest in NZ real estate is that here you own the dirt.
All Chinese land is owned by everyone, it can only be leased.
We can leave our NZ properties to our children, in China it can be left for the duration of a lease but thereafter it resorts to state ownership and Mr Xi decides if continued occupation is desirable.
Having lived in Shanghai and now HKG for over 4 years now. Those type of complexes are common. The developers add these things to attract buyers its like an apartment arms race.
It is good and very convenient for the people living there.
The one I lived in Shanghai had all of that plus a super market, 10 underground tennis courts, couple B ball courts, pools training and resort style, Gym, Spa, Dance and Yoga studios.
The robotic parking was humorous as at least a couple people per week got caught and forgot to get out of the car and got stuck. (mainly their own fault wechatting and not being aware of the surroundings)
I’m expecting the mic to be ripped out of Audrey’s hand any minute now….
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12160871
But where was she sitting in relation to Pence? Young doesn’t give us the seating plan in detail which is odd because it’s the detail which seems to have got under her skin.
Was the PM one over from Pence? If so I believe that’s as close as Pence will allow any woman other than his wife.
“For several days her officials had been telling New Zealand media that she would be sitting next to Pence at his request.“
What Young points out is the spin. ‘Next to Pence at his request’ is not next to Mrs Pence, whatever the seating plan. This would be nitpicking if those same officials hadn’t made such an issue if it.
It certainly is nitpicking. But then that’s what the Nats and their embedded media are reduced to right now.
@ mutton. + 100.
Well I’ve seen one article by one journalist and nothing from the National Party, so that’s a stretch.
Perhaps either the PM or her officials need to stop giving the “Nats and their embedded media” this kind of material?
Mike Pence would have lobbyists chewing on his ear every waking minute.
The most effective and successful of those lobbyists will be Mrs Pence.
jacinda is dumb like a fox.
Yep. Every word JA said to Mrs Pence Mr Pence will have heard loud and clear.
Whereas Audrey Young is just plain dumb.
I’m more thinking of those few minutes in the dark after both have put their books down, clicked off the Tiffany bedside lamps and while drowsing off Mrs Pence says…
“Have you seen any footage of those abandoned children on Nauru Island honey.”
They sleep in separate rooms, surely.
Probably separate houses but for as long as Mrs Pence is on Mike’s arm at the many events they attend, there is no better path for Jacinda to pursue if she wants Mike to get onboard with something.
Breast-feeding Prime Ministers come with a fair slice of gravitas in the eyes of Washington’s silver vixens.
Eventually, wives always win.
It’s the way it should be: Woman – Smart. Man – Stupid.
Woman: “Lets put a swish kitchen and bathroom into the rental?”
Man: “Don’t you think we need a depreciation nose diving 911 honey?”
Then why claim Jacinda was sitting next to Mr Pence? It just encourages the sort of article that Audrey Young wrote.
Here is the seating plan, Pence is sitting between his wife and another woman and Adern is next to Mrs Pence
https://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwj3g9GJ69feAhVZcCsKHX3_DR0QjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newshub.co.nz%2Fhome%2Fpolitics%2F2018%2F11%2Fjacinda-ardern-reveals-what-she-talked-about-with-us-vice-president-mike-pence.html&psig=AOvVaw2JrA3Q74DfN2D7ZTaCCUky&ust=1542420706617964
A week before Thanksgiving, members of the same tribe who helped the pilgrims survive 400 years ago stood before the nation’s Capitol Building. But instead of celebrating, they spoke out against the Trump administration’s decision to take their reservation away.
https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/news/give-back-our-reservation-mashpee-wampanoag-and-allies-march-on-the-capitol-O2aeJIbIHkyFyrSwyU_WEw/
This is the precursor to selling of great wads of federal land. Or if your cynical, land not covered by a treaty from the people they stole it off.
Because if you an indigenous American you ain’t worth a damn thing to white settler thinking.
Bernie Sanders took on Amazon for higher minimum wages, and won handsomely.
Now he’s taking on Walmart.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-walmart-minimum-wage_us_5bedc525e4b0443db862a5a8
God it would be great to have an MP like this in New Zealand naming and shaming the big low-wage companies.
Glad you finally jumped on the Bernie train. 😉
Just Biden my time
🙂
We should have a Stein to celebrate.
🙂
What about the big health and safety issue of onions on my sausage at Bunnings?
It is amusing when you hear it at first, but you cant deny they are taking safety seriously. Pity Pike river mine management was not as safety conscious as we may not have lost 29 people.
Because some muppet over here in Oz, slip on some BBQ onions with his sausage sanger at Bunnings in NSW or Vic and a filed a WHS complaint. This muppet may’ve even got a payout with WHS the complaint? Just like some of the muppets you slip on fruit/ veggies aisle or at the drinks aisle and try in sue the company for a few quid in the process.
I love that it’s the same company that refused to have a defibrillator onsite. Maybe they learned from the rucus that caused…
I didn’t know that. Do they have them on site now? They bloody should do.
Oh yeah – one of those things that caused so much outrage they u-turned in days.
Seems to be the corporate disease of “if it might mean work for head office, don’t do it”. Hence a memo about the order in which onions are put on sausages might absolve corporate from responsibility.
They could just sweep the spilled food up if the seagulls don’t take it, but whatevs
What about onions on saus Can you pop a link up so we can have some trivia to lighten our lives?
I see the ADF is purchasing a Squadron’s worth 12- 16 of the Armed version of the General Atom Reaper UAV’s this mornings Oz paper. There was talk of buying these back in 2014 and confirmed in the 2016 Defence White Paper with the impression it at purchase to buy in the early 2020’s, so it makes me wonder why the sudden purchase of these units now?
playing to the base. And aren’t they also getting F35s? Probably after something that works to go with that, lol
A New Zealand actor reports, in a tone of high seriousness,
that Israelis see themselves as “an underdog.”
RNZ National, Wednesday 14 November 2018
We’ve dealt before with the contemptible phenomenon of glib and ignorant theatre “luvvies” sounding off about things they lack the competence to comment on. There was the pretentious “theatre-maker” Stella Duffy [1], there was the “sooooo truthful” Tandi Wright [2] and of course who could ever forget the epically pompous stand-up comedian Andrew Clay? [3]
Now, I must report sadly, I have identified another talkative but shallow member of this sorority of the second-rate, this club of the clueless, this brotherhood of the bewildered, this guild of the giddy and guileless, this [That’s enough epithets.—J.A. Napes]. About 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, as I steered the Breenmobile through the suburban dreamscapes of the North Shore, I chanced upon the actor Tim Balme being interviewed by that great gorgeous emptiness Jesse Mulligan. Amongst other things, Balme spoke about his play The Ballad of Jimmy Costello, which is based on the George Wilder story. He mentioned that he had performed it in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Speaking slowly and with as much gravitas as he could summon, Balme stated that Israeli audiences “loved it” because “it’s a play about an underdog, and Israel is a nation that considers itself an underdog.”
Israel “an underdog.” A nation that “considers itself an underdog.”
???????!!??!?!?
The absurdity, indeed the obscenity, of that propaganda seemed to be lost on Tim Balme, and of course it was lost on Jesse Mulligan.
The decline of RNZ National continues.
[1] https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-03102015-2/#comment-1077820
[2] https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-28082015/#comment-1063760
[3] https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-04122013/#comment-738941
“…. Israel is a nation that considers itself an underdog.”
When the privileged and powerful start making out, that they are the victim, everyone else is in danger.
The fascist rulers of Germany made big play of Germans being the underdog prior to WWII.
The White Minority government of South Africa also played the victim card.
And Trump also plays the, hard done by, victim card in appealing to his base.
All great lies have some truth, Germans suffered the unfairness of the reparations forced on them at the end of the First World War. When it was the German soldiery and sailors who mutinied that brought that brutal imperial conflict to an end.
The Boers painted themselves the victims of British imperialism.
And Trump’s supporters feel squeezed by the ‘elites’ (even though Trump is one of them).
And the present day Zionist rulers of the state of Israel use the excuse of the Holocaust inflicted on European Jews, by Germany, to carry out almost similar levels of repression and murder and dispossession against the Palestinian people.
Jenny, you may have confused Russia with Germany regarding the end of World War 1?
The collapse/rebellion in Germany was mainly civilian, not military. Some sailors joined a dockworkers’ rebellion, but by and large the German military forces, while being forced onto the retreat, were intact, not defeated, and still in French/Belgian territory.
This is why they later believed that they had been stabbed in the back, which helped Hitler.
More moronic comments from the mozz, of course Israel are the under dog. I do dispair with mozzies lack of cognitive reasoning making discourse pointless.
You appear to have chosen your pseudonym well.
Kia ora Nation Simon & Emma The billion tree planting program from our Coalition Government is a good start but we need to invest more into climate change mitigation.
trump is a puppet his backers oil barons don’t want China’s manufacturing muscle to push oil into our history books as they will lose there control of the people on earth.
It was China that pushed the price of Solar down to a price that’s lower than thermal energy that is produced by coal and oil. China & Elon will push the petrol car into our history books and make energy democratic people producing there own power.
Ka kite ano. .
You see OUR Freedom and democracy is a illusion they keep most peoples reality in a big square box that the wealthy control the people on Mother Earth’s reality
Kia ora Newshub back with the moko’s lost track of time lets hope the The All Blacks test goes our way . The Black ferns Kia Kaha It’s awesome that the wahine World Cup is being hosted by Aotearoa I’m sure we will be good honest hoste . Ka pai to the young foot ball ferns .Looks like all the stories are about Jacinda trip overseas meeting other heads of state I will eaz on giving my of these people for the time being. Mike I read a story in Stuff on the reason why OUR weather is so variable at the minute after a long story the conclusion was human caused climate changes are the main causes
Ka Kite ano