If the AV mob are at higher risk of getting infected by Covid, which is just about a given, and we can see that the rule breakers are also the same AV mob, then how good is the home isolating of these same people going to work out? My guess they won't be keen on following the rules and who and how can the MoH or local GP's keep them at home and not just do whatever they want. They look likely to be a significant proportion of the forthcoming sick people and contact tracing is already falling apart.
"That's only compounded by the fact that Renwick's optimistic view of the future still entails a certain level of disaster. He told the Nature survey that 2 degrees of warming was most likely – more optimistic than most of his colleagues, but a prediction that would still have dire implications for human civilisation."
Now’s the time for the inventors & engineers & venture capitalists & govts to all be pulling their fingers out & coming up with varioys forms of mechanical carbon scrubbers & to be sequestering huge amounts in rocks n stuff.
The ever-short-sighted, arrogant & selfish human ape is still too busy with making money & creature comforts for no other creature than itself to see its own extinction or significant reduction in numbers becoming a real prospect on the compartively near horizon.
It’s almost like Nature has started coming up with its own solutions to the problem of so many humans outcompeting them & being so dangerous to other life forms. 😐
Now’s the time for the inventors & engineers & venture capitalists & govts to all be pulling their fingers out & coming up with varioys forms of mechanical carbon scrubbers & to be sequestering huge amounts in rocks n stuff.
And in the below-deck engineering spaces all these things, and more, are being worked on. Out of sight.
Meanwhile up on deck the performative sabre rattling, flag waving and siren wailing continue to serve an entirely different purpose.
Years ago I noticed that if I wrote something on the alarmist, fearmongering side of CC there was lots of noisy engagement. If I write to the solution side – /crickets
While no-one can predict the future in detail, it's reasonable to project by 2100 that most people will live in high energy, high tech urban centres. We already have a lot of knowledge and experience in building far more liveable, human centred habitats. All of humanity will be able to access what we currently regard in the developed world as an ‘upper middle class’ standard of living in many senses, but likely different in others.
High intensity industrial zones will exploit advances in materials and processes to deliver the totally decarbonised energy and closed loop resource use needed to sustain modernity. The trend will be toward an accelerated de-coupling of human demands on the natural world.
Surrounding them will be layered zones of agricultural and managed landscapes serving a range of purposes. A sophisticated permaculture plan but on a regional scale.
At least half of the ice-free planet will revert to wilderness in some form.
To achieve this we need around 5 – 10 times more electricity and process heat than we currently consume.
The only technological pathway that delivers on this is the next generation of advanced nuclear fission reactors that are on a fast path toward being delivered this decade. /nutshell
Would also help if humans could greatly reduce their love affair with the automobile. Not just increasing supply of electricity, but reducing the current massive demand for devices that eat the future with their insatiable demand. Personal transport is costed all wrong. The prevalence of huge SUV's on NZ roads is a completely avoidable and unnecessary environmental crime that only serves to bolster the egos of the rich.
God yes. Just one look at my local Suzuki & Mitsubishi dealer’s front lot is enuf. The vehicles just keep getting bigger & bigger every freakin year. Backing out of an angle park in the local main drag shopping area is a nerve-wracking ‘stick your car’s arse out into the traffic’ exercise because half the time you can’t see thru the high up smoky windows of the bloody swanky “truck” parked next to you.
Rest assured there is another one who reads what you write, not always agreeing with it.
The crickets observation is reflected down thread with wekas comment that folk basically don't care about the environment, or at least not enough to act.
Yes – oddly enough weka and I both agree on this point, even though we come at it from completely opposite directions.
But I'd suggest it's wrong to think people 'don't care about the environment'. They do – but they understandably care about themselves and their family more.
And interestingly it's the wealthy countries where people actively care for the environment the most.
And no – I really do not necessarily want people to ‘agree with me’. More than anything the value I get from being here comes with seeing people learn to speak their own minds clearly and honestly.
"I came to the conclusion a while back that many people who make a lot of noise about CC have no real interest whatsoever in solving it. What they really want to achieve is something else."
OK. So the accusation here is of a hidden agenda to 'end capitalism' or whatever. But hidden agenda accusations are easy to make, and because they are essentially inventions, they can always be made against whatever target is the enemy du jour.
Here's a different one for example – and it's nonsense too: I came to the conclusion a while back that many people who are very focused only on technology solutions to CC have no real interest in solving it. What they really want to achieve is something else – no change to an economic system that encourages infinite growth and has turbocharged CO2 emissions by pursuing profit at all costs.
Best to steer clear of intellectually questionable styles of argument imo. The politicisation of the climate change response is gong to be a disaster, so best not to add to it.
Gezza….much easier to stop using fossil fuels in the first place.
Solar is now massively cheaper and than it used to be and methods of storing solar power are being developed rapidly. That is the technology we need to concentrate on.
Carbon scrubbers etc. are ambulances at the bottom of the cliff.
Carbon scrubbers are very inefficient .People can all use less Carbon .Changing people's behaviour is the most logical way to reduce Carbon. When purchasing if everyone bought low carbon emissions product,reduced unnecessary travel,over indulgences to much food(we are an obese society) reduced our clothes purchases ,stop buying junk that falls to bits it would be easier to recycle. Plastic is every where ,only recyclable plastic should be allowed. It will cost more in some cases but using less will actually save money. Plastic bottles in Europe are much lighter thinner and the likes of Germany pay a deposit 20c € refundable on the thinner Plastic bottles.Also Europe limits the amount of sugar in soft drinks and juices they taste much nicer too.
Oh I forgot the richest 1% are responsible for 35% of all global carbon emissions.So they or we need to some how reduce their massive carbon footprint. Super yacht,private jet.taxes ,mansion ,luxury taxes.food and clothing waste taxes.
More problematic is the mobile paste box, which works well enough to pop up but not well enough to accept pasted text via mobile controls.
Without checking it looks like the javascript which tries to do something sophisticated with the contents of a paste also throws an unhandled exception.
Alternatively it might be detecting a paste in the paste control and popping up again ready to accept a paste (to which it will popup again).
I don't think the javascript paste control which prevents the built in browser function of pasting is the best use of javascript I have seen.
Efficiency doesn't matter if the energy source is both cheap and carbon free. And especially not if the end product – in this case reduced CO2 – is of existential value.
Added to that Bearded Git, is a need to develop regenerative farming, limit nitrates and work with nature using her well developed and balanced systems instead of industrialized mono systems which destroy the very soil we depend on.
Like our fight against covid, many intertwined approaches, methods and systems used together will be what we have, as sadly agreeing a safety margin is still not achieved. 1.5 is very bad 2.4 pushing disaster.
The most useful advances have been in applied biology, so far. imo.
Looking back, we are sickened by the excesses of Rome, but we do not live very differently. We wonder at cities and even civilizations lost. The answer usually loss of water, depleted resources, or religious wars. We are in some ways slow to learn. So the pot gets hotter.
Does Renwick (or the other climate scientists contributing) have a fag waving, sabre rattling agenda?…are they spending their working lives on a false mission?…somehow I dont think so.
I can envision a whole industry of house raising contractors and business springing up in the near future. Lift housing off the ground and put them up on piles. Let the water go underneath without damaging the house and drainage specialists to get rid of the sea water.
A near certainty nothing will be done to change the world away from it's current trajectory. Like the Housing crisis nobody wants to change, we will have to adapt.
I have made a conscious effort to not get involved in the is the govt handling covid well arguments.
I realise as a govt it is a shit hand to be dealt.
I saw an interview this morning with Hipkins about vax cert validity and expiration and needing boosters to renew and it seems they haven't even thought about it.
Apologies. But my patience is running thin.
This may be a stupid question. But does anyone know why our govt can't just talk to aus and copy their template?
Australians pay more taxes have a better funded health system have both Federal and State bearaucracy to run better responses maybe you can volunteer by paying 45% of your income in federal tax then pay your state taxes as well as higher local body rates .
The passes are valid for 6 months to allow for boosters being mandatory if that's where cabinet lands.
My guess as to whether a booster will be required will depend on factors like spread, medical advice, overseas practice, and particularly if the vaccine course recommendation changes from 2 doses at least 3 weeks apart with an extra dose for immunocompromised folk 8 weeks after dose 2 (as currently) to 3 doses with dose 2 after 3-12 weeks and dose 3 at least 6 months after dose 2 for most people and an extra dose for the immunocompromised folk 8 weeks after dose 2.
Chri T Well if we want our economy to flourish and our underfunded health system to function these are the sacrifices we need to make.Better vaccines are on the way better antiviral treatments are on the way.
Provided Covid does outsmart out pace our scientist's.
It sound like you would like lockdown to continue or open the floodgates and damage our health system and economy at the same time. Or maybe your just channeling Brian Tamaki.
Google newstalkzb week on demand. Think 10 past 7. But might have got timings wrong. Haven't time now but will try to find a proper link to audio later. End of day. Was on national media. I also appreciate my interpretation of interview is obviously not going to match other people's. Especially on here.
Just downloaded our vaccine passports – easy process but we were already set up in Real Me/My Covid Record. PDF which can be saved on your phone, printed, valid for 6 months.
A question I sometimes ask myself, Patricia. Both the ducks & the pukekos tendvto just "disappear" when the weather gets foul. It's tempting to think of them huddled up & shivering in the foliage somewhere but all the waterbirds keep themselves groomed daily & thus their feathers are waterproof & dry, & probably keep them warm as they just hunker down wherever their sleeping nests are.
Once the rain stops, or lets off a little, the birds soon appear on either side of the stream, or swimming in the middle of it. Neither ducks nor pooks seem much bothered by inclement weather.
Stuffs story “Covid 19: freedoms shrinking “ this morning has a very succinct sum up of how vulnerable the antis are to getting Covid. At the 90% vaccination rate, of 10,000 people , the 9000 vaccinated will have 675 Cases of whom 23 will be hospitalised but of the 1000 unvaccinated, 500 will get Covid and 50 will be hospitalised. That is why we cannot have teachers etc anywhere near us or our tamariki because 50% of them will be carriers at some time. Even then the the hospitalisation numbers are a bit scary meaning for every 10,000 people there will be 73 cases, 23 for the vacced 50 for the unvaxxed , albeit not all at the same time but still a lot of people for small DHBs of say 150,000 people that’s 1095 patients of whom about 10 will die, maybe less as the vacced have a lower rate of mortality. That is pretty bloody scary.
That is why the unvaccinated must be ring-fenced and not allowed to mingle.
To add to that, children are disease vectors at the best of times, and with education being compulsory for children so having to attend school classes at some point, even if Cabinet did nothing about mandates, many schools would end up mandating vaccinations anyway as a health and safety measure for teachers following a risk assessment. At least a mandate means schools don't have to work it out for themselves or deal with the legal fallout so much.
Why please is the edit function not working, and on my iPad it does not allow me to directly reply to another reply? Is it my ineptitude or is it just that my first shot of 5G is internally fighting with my second one of the Anti-Christ venom.
on an iphone there is a choice of Mobile or Desktop versions of the site. One has functional reply buttons, the other doesn't. I switch back and forth between the two (readability, commenting). You could see if that works on an ipad, switching buttons at the bottom of every page.
Don't know about the edit function sorry, but see if the other version works better for that too.
Why the heck don't they charge people at the time they leave MIQ like a hotel does then we wouldn't need to have the costs of the debt collectors? The chance of collecting the old overdue amounts is getting slimmer and slimmer. It really does show up their lack of business experience as I can foresee a large amount of bad debts being written off in the future.
Jimmy who gives your just pathetically nit picking .In the overall Covid response $100 billion plus its very small brickies and nit picking time wasting chasing a small amount . Those bearaucracy could spend their time much better elsewhere.When you look at govt money being wasted South Cantrbury Finance $ 1.6 billion Auckland conference Centre $400 million Clyde Dam $2 billion probably $4 billion in today's money its chicken feed it would take a bird brain to figure $30 million is worth worrying about.
Well, why don't we make the service free again. After all we have money to spend and waste, and surely every one knows that 30 million is peanuts, its after all only taxpayers money that gets wasted. Right?
Are you not constantly complaining about the easy ride given to tax cheats and the frenzy at any hint if benefit cheating. Jimmy just seems to be applying that principal to people with the means to go overseas (who mostly aren't beneficiaries). Its hard to see the need of selective interpretation, though I would note applying it as a tax which gets handed on might send a few MIQ hotels bankrupt when they can't collect that 3 grand bill off the same. Of course the govt will easily collect whats due, paid on leaving or not.
That's the attitude…it's only a small amount of someone else's (tax payers as Sabine says) money, plenty more where that came from. You missed the point that they would not need to bother chasing the debts if they applied a bit of normal business sense and billed them at the time to a credit card.
The PM from this link doesn't agree with you, & believes that those using MIQ should pay, and compared this cost to student loans. So if it wasn't worth the effort why did the government implement the policy and then increase the fee ?
"The aim of the charges is to share the costs in a way that fairly reflects the benefits to both the New Zealand public of having a robust system, and those who leave and enter the country."
Sure, cost recovery is "important" to greater or lesser degrees, but it's not like "oh, we need this money to come in otherwise the staff don't get paid", like an actual business.
It's not a business. It's not even full cost recovery. Sure, implementing the new charging system had some issues. But you change the requirements on a large project, shit's going to go wrong.
My response was centred around why the govt placed so much effort into setting up and announcing this policy, and now we see that it has been left to rust away without any intentions of living up to the announce policy.
I am only quoting the pm in her response re student loans, her words to support the charge.
My initial response was directed to comment 10.1, not to your response, my mistake.
But as we have engaged in conservation. It was not rocket science to setup a system in recovery/collect the costs that the government was seeking. It is IMO an issue of fairness and trust, to those who have paid or were charged. The govt was going to charge those entering the country under certain conditions as per their announced policy. It there was no intention for this to be carried out, then why bother in the policy ?
Of course there was an intention to collect. Just as every pilot intends to give their passengers a smooth and speedy flight. But sometimes these priorities take a back seat to not crashing the plane.
The priority of MIQ was to keep covid out. It failed at that, possibly because we didn't send new arrivals to actual internment camps instead of hotels, but it did a good effort. Money, schmoney.
They don't have to run it as a business making a profit, but just as a "user pays" where the burden doesn't fall on the poor old tax payer yet again would be nice.
What I don't get about this is your 'user pays' is actually going to turn MIQ into govt debt collectors. If it passes on the cost its going to be easier to collect the fee off MIQ than the users, so handing on default risk. Why would anybody think thats a good idea?
I don't understand your comment. I'm simply saying if they charged people as they arrive or leave MIQ there would be no debts to collect so problem solved….simple.
Have a think about who is owed the debt and who is collecting it. I don't think we want to turn MIQ facilities into debt collectors, they should be focused on protecting the border.
So are you saying MIQ stays should be free? ie. basically paid for by tax payers? As many of these people travelling can certainly afford overseas trips and MIQ.
No, I'm just saying the govt should be happy to collect its own debts. Responsibility for debt collection is not something MIQ facilities need on their hands right now either.
Good article in the Australian The Age, regarding the August position statement from Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP):
My clinical training is to assess and treat each client as an individual, and it is not appropriate to have any preconceived beliefs about a diagnosis until a thorough assessment has been undertaken. I would never try to talk a client out of their beliefs, but I do try to give them permission to explore what pathway is right for them. It is a client-affirming approach. Unfortunately, this approach clashes with the gender-affirming approach that now dominates the socio-political discourse about transgender people, and many health services worldwide.It
The article talks about the rise in FTM patients, and receiving her first formal complaint after making this podcast.
It occurs to me, there are two very conflicting, diametrically opposed desires operating amongst most of us.
Page after page of desires to get back to enjoying hospitality, the 'economy' to get going again, BAU.
And, we must reduce out carbon footprint/stop ruining the planet.
I called in on a previous employer yesty and sat while a few had lunch.
Vege burgers and fries. The fries are from the U.S., packaged in 2 kg lots in a single use plastic bag. 5 x bag in a waxed cardboard box. Moved to Auckland, trucked to a distribution hub, trucked to Palmy food wholesaler, trucked to site.
Burger buns, made in Auckland, each layer seperated by a thin, single use plastic bag, ditto the distribution.
The greens, in this case a slaw, made in Auckland, 2kgs in a heavy wall, single use vac-pac bag, ditto distribution.
The aioli was made in house, but with eggs from Auckland, and canola oil made goodness knows where, garlic processed in Auckland….
The point is we need a radical shift in our consumer behaviour, basically far less of it. Trigger warning- this includes our coffees.
Despite 35 years of neo liberal thinking, we can't just sub-contract our way out of destroying the planet.
That would be great, just sometimes not practical. Not everybody lives near a vege pad of a size that feeds a family all year round.
Also many companies are making bulk deals that include minimum delivery so that they get a better price and everybody out there can afford their product. Health and Safety law and regulation will demand the overuse of packaging (my all time pet hate). The trading of food returns taxes and GST….there is admittingly no need to import unless our cows are being part of an export deal in exchange….perhaps..
The taxes taken to pay back those 16 Billion dollars will not create an environment of fast paced self-sufficiency and funds to improve waste water etc. In fact I have a bet that after the next election GST will go up by 2%.
We could go hundreds of years back but this means the deal between ordinary folks and the government is off. The exchange was land for convenience of mass distribution and access to food and goods. After the royalty was killed off. Most will choose convenience. If we are to go back we need the land to support ourselves. Provided we have the skills to work it and the land is arable.
So where is the middle? And why are we building houses on the best land in NZ to grow food? Why are we allowing waste water to go into the waterways and sea?
What I am getting at is the business model is broken, no longer fit for purpose.
The chips are a prime example. Buy spuds from a localish producer, delivery in reusable 20kg hessian sacks. Process and add value in-house. Money stays in local economy and school age person can get good knife skills.
Food outlets can specialize rather than the 50 item menu that is commonplace now.
School aged person will cost you 20 NZD per hour, plus kiwi saver, plus holiday pay, plus sick pay, will need training and will need another person at the ready to replace the school aged person while they are on leave or on holiday.
well said gsays. I've been wanting to write a post about this for a long time. At the moment I'm tending towards thinking that most New Zealanders don't actually give a shit about the climate or ecology. They say they do but when it comes down to it, most are not willing to change or act in ways that will make a difference. Covid has made this very obvious. Hard to write about the issue given that.
Hard to disagree with you weka. Lip service comes to mind.
I was feeling curmudgeonly when I wrote it. As much as a reminder that we can't have it both ways- the return of an industry that is poorly paid and relies on ignoring externalities while doing our bit facing CC.
Not wanting to tell you how to suck eggs but maybe framed in the context of our most popular PM's 'nuclear moment'?
the problem for me with centering Labour is that atm I always want to use the headling "fuck Labour" (when writing about climate, or water, or poverty, or housing…)
Is it fair to describe a far less carbon intensive lifestyle as poverty?
It's accurate to say that a lifestyle without electricity is poverty. The question is how carbon intensive is that electricity? Two related but different things.
The point being made is that in all the developing countries – when it comes to a choice between no electricity and dirty coal generated electricity – the coal wins every time. And that's the crux of the climate change debate.
The only technical pathway forward is carbon free, reliable electricity that is cheaper than coal.
(I will add that making coal more expensive by stopping subsidies and adding a carbon price really would help a lot in the developed world – but then again you cannot blame countries like say Indonesia looking at this as a very poor deal indeed.)
well considering that global supply chains are all turning to custard due to Covid and other factors we are all gonna be buying local a lot more, I suspect.
The one from the 1940s? That was when I believe it was first used. For instance this "full settlement" that was arbitrarily imposed Taranaki iwi in the mid-1940s by the self-interested beneficiaries of outright land theft in the Taranaki.
For the 143,870 acres confiscated from Te Whakatohea, which included ‘all the flat and useful ¯ land’, the Commission recommended an annual payment of £300.
A subsequent petition from the people of Te Whakatohea summed up the tribe’s view of the Crown’s ‘generosity’: ¯ What generous gentlemen those Commissioners were! What magnanimity! What liberality! 143,870 acres of the flat, fertile and alluvial lands in and around the township of Opotiki politically and scientifically filched from the Natives by the early administrators of this country—and the said liberal gentlemen recommended £300! What lavish prodigal generosity . . . It was political robbery from people who were defenceless; it was spoliation of a Native race [61].
‘Final Settlement’ of claims relating to the confiscation of Maori land was reached in the ¯ mid-1940s when legislation was enacted giving effect to the recommendations of the Sim Commission. Taranaki Maori received their £5000 annuity and an additional £300 for the ‘loss and destruction’ of ¯ certain ‘goods and chattels’ during the Crown’s invasion of the pacifist settlement of Parihaka [62]. The Crown would later concede that during the invasion of Parihaka in 1881, Crown troops committed a number of rapes, residents were wrongly and indefinitely detained, others were forcibly evicted, their homes and sacred buildings destroyed or desecrated, their heirlooms stolen, and their crops and livestock systematically destroyed [63]. By way of ‘Final Settlement’ for the loss of 1.2 million acres, Waikato-Tainui and Ngati Maniapoto received an annuity of £5000, an additional one-o ¯ ff payment of £5000 and a further £1000 annuity for a duration of 45 years [64]. Having rejected the £300 initially offered, Whakatohea received a one-o ¯ ff payment of £20,000 in final settlement for the confiscation of 143,870 acres [65].
5. The Waitangi Tribunal and the Contemporary Treaty Settlement Process
With such paltry compensation, it is hardly surprising that Maori continued to call for the return ¯ of their lands—the centrality of land to Maori identity and social, economic and spiritual wellbeing ¯ cannot be overstated [66]. During the 1960s and 1970s, and in an international context of increasingly vociferous protest against war and imperialism and for, among other things, indigenous rights, women’s rights, and queer rights, Maori were involved in a number of high-profile protest actions aimed at ¯ the return of their ancestral lands [26] (pp 21–24, 25), [67–69]
Note that "the return of their ancestral lands" means getting a income in perpetuity rather then getting a gratuity that gets eroded by inflation and has final dates. For some reason that wasn’t offered for a act of theft – instead there was this arbitrarily imposed “full settlement”.
That is why if you look at the best run iwi organisations, they tend to focus on acquiring land and then leasing it as market rentals (where they aren't putting up their own housing).
There is a reason why Maori, especially the elderly, are so distrustful of "full and final settlements" imposed or extorted from them by people who are using their theft 'rights' to put them over barrel.
They are also entirely aware that the medical system that works for others seem to leave their population with distressingly low life expectancy, education systems that seem to only prepare their kids for jail, settlers who seem to like spending their time using rivers and waterway like the sewers that they left in Europe in the 19th century, etc.
They rightfully say that those systems alien to their culture are clearly not working for them – and say that they should be changed so that they do. I have a great deal of sympathy for that point of view.
I found the Kiwi education system to be a pile of crap myself – more of a daycare for working parents rather than a education system – I managed to educate myself despite its clear deficiencies with the support of my family and a huge stockpile of books from university.
Your comment implicitly rejects any possibility of the the Treaty process ever being finalised. And that's because as framed it cannot be.
In one sense the only way to resolve it finally is for everything that happened in NZ after 1840 to be erased – everything removed or destroyed if it could not be – and then given back to the iwi chiefs as found and in a form no longer ‘alien to their culture’. That would return precisely what was taken – full and final.
The problem is that the modernity and progress that the vile, thieving colonials brought with them – keeps on adding to the value of everything. Settlement one decade will always be 'paltry' the next.
I concluded back in the 80's that the process was designed by both sides to never achieve finality.
It's always been paltry the wellington settlement for $170 million plus some land was all the govt could give under the $2 billion overall cap.The land stolen and confiscated was estimated at the time to be worth $17 billion.
Yet Maori gave some of this land in the paltry settlement back as a National Park. To show how generous they are.You would not get that from those who have profited out of that stolen land.
I concluded back in the 80's that the process was designed by both sides to never achieve finality.
I would say that you were just impatient and clearly didn't understand the complexity of the task.
We are talking about claims running back to 1840, and concentrated in the 1860-1890 era. My direct family tree were here for much of that period – the first of whom arrived in the early 1820s and the last in the 1880s.
I couldn't give you a genealogy running much past 1930 or a land history of property running much past the 40 years. That is despite the best efforts of some of my deceased elders who got interested in things like that in their retirement. I'm someone who is strongly interested in history – just not particularly of DNA breeding patterns or the tales of my ancestors. In this I'm pretty typical of Europeans culture outside of some self-appointed aristocracy who lean on their ancestors achievements rather than their own.
Maori have a very different culture. They still have a tradition of carrying a verbal history as a iwi, hapu or just a family clan. Sometimes, like all verbal histories that aren't taken down from the living, these are frequently blurred by time and embellishments.
That Waitangi Treaty was envisaged as a process – at least in part because was going to be bloody difficult dealing with century old claims.
The problem with finality is the sheer number of land cases where land was confiscated unlawfully or where the laws were made without a legal justification. Each of which has to be documented as evidence and then negotiated. This was always going to take decades. Just doing the historical research when virtually everyone involved in the original deeds was dead was immense.
It was also what the lazy 'full and final settlement' morons running the processes for the crown back in the 1940s neglected to do at all. So there wasn't even a record from that, let alone from when the expropriations were made. Quite simply the crown didn't hold sufficient records to refute claims and they had to work like crazy digging back into the remaining records to verify or refute claims.
Maori were never going to get all of their land back – their only prospect of that was to claim back land that the state had grabbed from them and still held, or compensatory assets (typically of less value). The money paid out was generally targeted by iwi towards buying other revenue generating assets.
A key part of the negotiation was putting place forward agreements so that when certain types of crown held property became available that iwi often got first refusal and an acceptable purchase process. That process is ongoing.
But as far as I am aware each land settlement that has been achieved has been final, subject to any outstanding claims outside of the agreement. And once the appeals from competing hapu and competing iwi were dealt with.
In one sense the only way to resolve it finally is for everything that happened in NZ after 1840 to be erased – everything removed or destroyed if it could not be – and then given back to the iwi chiefs as found and in a form no longer ‘alien to their culture’. That would return precisely what was taken – full and final.
You could also ask for the dead killed by European diseases to arise from the grave too along with the families that they never had. However none of those things were in the Waitangi Tribunal enabling legislation.
The land claims are slowly coming to an end because new claims were closed off in 2008 and while the remaining historical claims (before September 1992) are large – they are few.
There are a number of non-assets claims still proceeding related to the principles in the Treaty. The most important of those (in my view) have to do with despoliation of water. Something that I have a great deal of sympathy about because the crown has traditionally screwed this up really badly. We will be spending another century cleaning them up because we have to (and that is the earth sciences and history student in me talking).
But the other major problem that remains is the 180 years odd violations of the treaty provisions social effects on the Maori population. I usually boil this down to one set of statistics – the percentage of Maori in prisons is obscene and clearly points to the failure of kiwi society and the crown at all levels.
As at 2018 about 1 in 142 Maori males will spend time in prison in their lifetime compared to 1 in 880 kiwis of euro ancestry. Our male prisons usually hold about 50% or more Maori population at any one time, and about 68% in female prisons.
Maori are about 15% of our total population. Those prison figure haven't budged much in my lifetime. And they probably won't until Maori feel more comfortable in our common society.
That is just dead weight on our common society. Clearly the opportunities must be limited to force so many down that unproductive path (even if there wasn't the filtering effect of the justice system – see this Stuff interactive)
In the tech areas that I have been working in for the last 30 years, I can't recall ever working with any Maori colleagues at all – despite most of those organisations having some pretty diverse hires from both local born and immigration. Somehow I don't think that having 15% of our population effectively excluded from some of the highest paying professional jobs is a good sign.
The only place that I have ever seen over the last 45 years in my jobs where Maori employment at comparable or better levels was when I was in in the army.
The regular force enlisted were close to 50% of their intake. The TF intake I was was ridiculously European for a kid coming from Mt Albert Grammar with its diversity of population back in 1977. That spoke to me as being a systematic poverty problem. I suspect that it might be a bit better today
Until those kinds of inequities subside to an acceptable, the Waitangi Tribunal needs to continue their work – because it is clear that the promises in any version of our founding treaty haven't been fulfilled.
Plus having a disaffected population who doesn't trust the crown or the state and isn't able to work to their capabilities through lack of opportunities is just unproductive. You only have to look at the Maori vaccination rates to see consequences of that.
I read that and find myself nodding at most points. You touch on two main themes – the ToW process itself and the obvious alienation of many – but certainly not all – Maori.
Stepping back I'd argue that we've both made the case, from differing directions, that the idea of the ToW process bringing any kind of finality to the table was always wrong. Both parties were always going to be disappointed because the land itself – important as it is in some ways – was never really the issue.
The real issue is one that has repeated itself uncountable times over millennia – what happens when one society that has progressed to a wider stage of evolution encounters one that has not. Essentially Maori – like so many similar peoples elsewhere – were a tribal society that were never going to remain unchanged when modernity arrived.
This doesn't mean that tribal societies have no value, nor lack their own sophistication and history. It says nothing about the stature and mana of the people who lived in that world. But ultimately their tribal social technology had no answer to the nation state the Europeans brought with them.
This is the very stuff of history – peoples who had adopted broader based social structures and wider moral horizons, displacing those who had yet to. Absent this process we would still be hunter-gatherers, numbering no more than a few 10's of millions across the whole planet. Neither of us would be here to type out this conversation.
Your second theme on the alienation of some Maori within the wider NZ society is too complex to deal with concisely. I'll confine myself to noting that while the left has been spitting out phrases like 'structural racism' and 'white supremacy' for quite some time now – there is no evidence that any of this effort has reduced the Maori head count in our prisons by so much as one.
I'll confine myself to noting that while the left has been spitting out phrases like 'structural racism' and 'white supremacy' for quite some time now – there is no evidence that any of this effort has reduced the Maori head count in our prisons by so much as one.
Sure – but that is more of an indictment of the tendency for the hand-wringers of the left to talk without doing anything productive when they don't feel the problem personally. They love talking about problems but recoil from looking for solutions. And they too bloody impatient looking for results. Social changes take many decades, and usually many generations.
BTW: The conservatives have the opposite problem – they're always looking to stop talking and do stupid actions. Short-term actions that don't solve problems and tend to create even larger ones. Look at any policy driven by Judith Collins in her ministerial career for the definitive exemplars.
But the problem you're talking about is exactly what the Maori activists that I took time to go and listen to back in the 80s and 90s said would happen. Attempts to do things the European way using crown entities on a Maori population that didn't trust those processes was doomed to fail.
They have never worked in the past – but fools in politics, ministerial policies, and their departments keep trying to repeat the same failed approaches over and over again. I went back into the history and that is exactly what happened 150 years.
The argument of the activists was that only way to lift Maori out of the vast hole that those failed policies had created was to get Maori to designed the policies and ideally to largely handle them (there are obvious issues with skill shortages).
As a person who knows roughly 90 computer languages, I really miss not having had the chance to learn Maori myself. I have absolutely no ear for Maori, and I find I keep needing it more and more as Maori spreads into daily life – especially in the names of government organisations. They all 'sound' the same to me. I have never used the spoken and written Latin, French, and German that I did to varying degrees at school.
Outside of a few Iwi organisations starting in the later 90s, there weren't any other attempts to follow this singular and as far as I can tell only mature successful strategy example of Maori-led solutions for Maori until the 21st century. These were few even then and now.
So I'd say – don't be so frigging impatient. These are generational changes not ones that turn on a historical dime.
But at least as a society we're slowly getting out of the habit of trying to tailor generic solutions for problems that are specific to Maori and other groups.
I tend to focus on Maori because of the usual Pareto analysis way of solving systematic issues. Identify the biggest problem first (ie like prison populations) and figure out based on the previous failed solutions and odd successful one on what to try next until you find things that keep working – then expand from that.
Right now the only visible effect is the slow rise of a Maori middle income group, in a large part mostly working on Maori issues or organisations. That works for me – it was what I argued was the only useful path back in the 1980s and 1990s when the Waitangi Tribunal process started making decisions that eventually started to capitalise Iwi corporations. That Maori working for Maori was the only historically viable process.
This is the very stuff of history – peoples who had adopted broader based social structures and wider moral horizons, displacing those who had yet to. Absent this process we would still be hunter-gatherers, numbering no more than a few 10's of millions across the whole planet. Neither of us would be here to type out this conversation.
Yes and no. We don't exactly have a human monoculture world wide despite our massively generic similarity compared to any other species apart from cheetahs. I'd argue that historically you can identify the successful cultures by their very lack of a monoculture. They are the bastard mixes of cultures that learn to accommodate differences.
In NZ, I really noticed this when I left the Ponsonby and Mt Albert environs of the 1970s and went working around the rest of the North and South island cities and towns in the 1980s. They felt class ridden and stagnant to me. Plus the food was terrible.
I'm short on time to do justice to this conversation but again – mostly in agreement. The nitpick that leapt out at me was this:
. I'd argue that historically you can identify the successful cultures by their very lack of a monoculture.
Tell that to much of Asia – but still I take the point. However what I had in mind was not so much 'culture' in the sense you are using it here, but 'social technology' in the sense of the staged progression from the small clan based nomadic hunter-gather, the territorial tribalists, the regional based city based empire, the rise of the civilisational empire and toward the modern nation state. The most important distinction at each stage is the scope of their 'moral horizon' – how many people are on the inside vs the outside.
This concept is really not the same as culture or ethnicity at all. And while the transition from one stage to the other is always turbulent, in the long run the society that has adopted the broader based social horizon dominates.
Particularly galling is the compensation paid to the farmers for losing their free land was more than that paid to the owners whose land it was. They also extended the leases further.
Apparently Maori don't get the same property rights / compensation that white settlers do. Same as the compensation paid to slave owners for losing their slaves really!
@swordfish:
1. turn off javascript to get the plain comment box
2. use the <pre> tag to print fixed width text
3. construct your table like so.. (dunno if the html table tags are supported.. could test it out later)
| Use a | fixed width | font perhaps? |
| Line1 | ..column2.. | .. column3 .. |
| dunno | if it will | .. work??? .. |
It's always been paltry the wellington settlement for $170 million plus some land was all the govt could give under the $2 billion overall cap.The land stolen and confiscated was estimated at the time to be worth $17 billion.
Yet Maori gave some of this land in the paltry settlement back as a National Park. To show how generous they are.You would not get that from those who have profited out of that stolen land.
wait, you want the lockdown to end early? Isn't that against the collective good? Genuinely curious how you square this with the state using force on other ways.
Yes, it does tell you doesn't it. I stopped looking at the whole affair about the time the families were trying to get an injunction to stop him getting it sealed.
Oh well, I suppose they will be demanding that full sized tunnels now be drilled instead of the tiny things that take a camera.
So this isn't the first time someone has used their health credentials and then argued that they shouldn't be held responsible because they were doing so "in a personal capacity". a recently-departed Southern DHB board member did something similar.
Makes me wonder whether "personal capacity" is doing the rounds as an "absolve responsibility free" card, like "I don't recognise your authority" and "sovereign citizen". Seems to have about the same success rate.
Michael Bassett writes – I’m not sure that it’s much comfort to anyone to know that the post-Covid surge in violent crimes, gang activity, ram raids, random shootings, thuggery and stabbings is occurring in other countries as well as New Zealand. These days, wagging school, out-of-control welfare and ...
Oliver Hartwich writes – Cast your mind back to mid-December. A new Prime Minister had just been sworn in, the new Government started its 100-day programme, and Christmas was only days away.Amid all the haste, a report landed that would have deserved our attention.I am talking about the ...
TL;DR: An unseasonally early icy blast at the same time as some long-overdue maintenance almost caused Aotearoa-NZ’s electricity system to black out this week. That’s because a quadropoly of gentailers1 have prioritised paying dividends from their rising profits and adding debt over investing in 1.5 GigaWatts of new wind farms ...
Hi,Before we crack into today’s Webworm, I wanted to acknowledge the fact that Israel is pushing into Rafah. Over 100,000 Palestinians are now attempting to flee the one place that was deemed “safe”.Trouble is, the place they’re fleeing to is already destroyed. Total annihilation is the end goal here.“Israel is ...
‘It has been said that figures rule the world. Maybe. I am quite sure that it is figures which show us whether it is being ruled well or badly.’ GoetheI was struck at a recent conference on equity for the elderly, how many presenters implicitly relied upon Statistics New Zealand. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveReporting on defence spending late last year, RNZ said the coalition government will have to make some tough calls this term to help the force address staff shortages and ageing infrastructure. “These are huge, huge amounts of government spending. It’s a significant proportion of the government’s ...
Peter Dunne writes – I am always wary when I hear that the Controller and Auditor-General has commented on or made recommendations to the government about an issue of public policy that does not relate strictly to public expenditure. According to the legislation, the role of the Controller ...
How Labour’s and National’s failure to move beyond neoliberalism has brought NZ to the brink of economic and cultural chaos Chris Trotter writes – TO START LOSING, so soon after you won, requires a special kind of political incompetence. At the heart of this Coalition ...
And why did the Crown not challenge the Tribunal’s jurisdiction? Gary Judd writes – Retired District Court Judge, David Harvey, has posted on his A Halflings View Substack an excellent summary of Justice Isacs’ judgment declining to uphold the witness summons issued by the Waitangi Tribunal ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Do you believe New Zealand runs its general elections fairly and competently? As a voter, can you be confident that the votes on your ballot will be counted towards the final result?As a political scientist, I’ve been asked these questions many times and ...
Macklemore isn’t someone I’d usually think about. Sure I liked his big hit from a few years back, everybody did it was catchy and cool with some memorable lines. But if I was going to think of artists who might speak out on political matters or world events, he wouldn’t ...
Another week goes by in the Luxon government’s efforts to roll back the past 70 years of social progress. The school lunches programme is to be downgraded by $107 million, and women need bother their heads no longer about pay equity, let alone expect ACC to provide adequate sexual violence ...
Brrr, the first cold snap of the year. Hope you’re rugged up nice and warm. Here are some stories that caught our eye this week… This Week on Greater Auckland On Monday, we had a post from a new contributor, Connor Sharp, who dug into the public feedback ...
Almost all of the Wellington City Council’s recommended zoning changes to allow many more apartments and townhouses in its inner-suburbs have been approved.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guest on geopolitics, ...
Open access notablesA Global Increase in Nearshore Tropical Cyclone Intensification, Balaguru et al., Earth's Future:Tropical Cyclones (TCs) inflict substantial coastal damages, making it pertinent to understand changing storm characteristics in the important nearshore region. Past work examined several aspects of TCs relevant for impacts in coastal regions. However, ...
Do you believe New Zealand runs its general elections fairly and competently? As a voter, can you be confident that the votes on your ballot will be counted towards the final result? As a political scientist, I’ve been asked these questions many times and always answered “yes”, with very few ...
Thus far May has followed on from a quiet April in the blogging department, but in fairness, it has been another case of doing what I am supposed to be doing, namely writing original fiction. Plus reading. So don’t worry – I have been productive. But in order to reassure ...
Buzz from the Beehive A new government agency will open for business on July 1 – the Social Investment Agency. As a new standalone central agency effective from 1 July, it will lead the development of social investment across Government, helping ministers understand who they need to invest in, what ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “Follow the money” is the classic directive to journalists trying to understand where power and influence lie in society. In terms of uncovering who influences various New Zealand political parties and governments, it therefore pays to look at who is funding them. The ...
Alwyn Poole writes – After being elected to Parliament in 2008 the maiden speech of Hipkins was substantially around education policy. He was Labour’s spokesperson for education 2011 – 2017. He was Minister for Education from 2017 until February 2023. This is approximately 88% of the time Labour ...
Eric Crampton writes – A fashion industry group is lobbying for protections. They make the usual arguments and a newer one. None of it makes sense. An industry group says it pumped $7.8 billion into the economy last year – that’s 1.9 percent of New Zealand’s GDP. ...
In December 2006, Fiji's military leader Voreqe Bainimarama overthrew the elected government in a coup. He ruled Fiji for the next 16 years, first as dictator, then as "elected" Prime Minister. But now, he's finally been sent to jail where he belongs. Sadly, this isn't for his real crime of ...
Don't like National's corrupt Muldoonist "fast-track" law? Aotearoa's environmental NGO's - Greenpeace, Forest & Bird, WWF, Coromandel Watchdog, Coal Action Network Aotearoa, Kiwis Against Seabed Mining, and others - have announced a joint march against it in Auckland in June: When: 13:00, 8 June, 2024 Where: Aotea Square, Auckland You ...
Seymour describes sushi as too woke for school meals. There are no fish sushi meals recommended by the School Lunches programme. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: The Government will swap out hot meals for packaged sandwiches to save $107 million on school lunches for poor kids. MSD has pulled ...
I don't mind stealin' bread from the mouths of decadenceBut I can't feed on the powerless when my cup's already overfilled, yeahBut it's on the table, the fire's cookin'And they're farmin' babies, while slaves are workin'The blood is on the table and the mouths are chokin'But I'm goin' hungry, yeahSome ...
The Ardern Government’s chickens came home to roost yesterday with the news that the country is short of natural gas. In 2018, Labour banned offshore petroleum exploration, and industry executives say that the attendant loss of confidence by the industry impacted overall investment in onshore gas fields. Energy Resources Minister ...
Hi,If you’ve been digging through the newly launched Webworm store (orders are being dispatched worldwide as I type!) you’ll have noticed the best model we had was Calvin.This is Calvin.Calvin.Calvin is 7, and is the son of my producer over on Flightless Bird, Rob — aka “Wobby Wob”. Rob also ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Climate change is everywhere. And when something's everywhere it can feel like it's nowhere. So how do we get our heads ...
Its a law like gravity: whenever a right-wing government is elected, they start attacking democracy. And now, after talking to their Republican and Tory and Fidesz chums at the International Democracy Union forum in Wellington, National is doing it here, announcing plans to remove election-day enrolment. Or, to put it ...
Yesterday Winston Peters focussed his attention on the important matter at hand. Tweeting. Like the former, and quite possibly next, orange POTUS, from whom he takes much of his political strategy, Winston is an avid X’er.His message didn’t resemble an historic address this time. In fact it was more reminiscent ...
Buzz from the Beehive A significant decline in natural gas production has given Resources Minister Shane Jones an opportunity to reiterate his enthusiasm for the mining and burning of coal. For good measure, he has praised an announcement from Genesis Energy that it will resume importing coal. He and Energy ...
“Follow the money” is the classic directive to journalists trying to understand where power and influence lie in society. In terms of uncovering who influences various New Zealand political parties and governments, it therefore pays to look at who is funding them. The political parties are legally obliged to make ...
Rob MacCullough writes – Here is my subjective ranking on a “most-left” to “most-right” scale of most of our major NZ Universities, with some anecdotal (and at times amusing) evidence to back up the claim.Extreme Left Auckland University of TechnologyEvidenceThe ...
Eric Crampton writes – I hadn’t thought about this one until a helpful email showed up in my inbox.It’s pretty obvious that income tax thresholds should automatically index with inflation – whether to anchor the thresholds in percentiles of the income distribution, or to anchor against a real ...
Jacqui Van Der Kaay writes – Parliament’s speaker had no option but to refer Green MP Julie Anne Genter to the Privileges Committee for her behaviour in the House last Wednesday evening. The incident, in which she crossed the floor to wave a book and yell at National ...
Gary Judd writes – The Dean of the law school at the Auckland University of Technology is someone called Khylee Quince. I have been sent her social media posting in which she has, over the LawNews headline “Senior King’s Counsel files complaint about compulsory tikanga Maori studies for ...
Cleo Paskal writes – WASHINGTON, D.C.: ‘Many of us have received phone calls from [the opposing camp] telling them if they join the camp they will be given projects for their wards and $300,000 [around US$35,000] each’, says former Malaita Premier Daniel Suidani. The elections in Solomon Islands aren’t ...
With hindsight, it was inevitable that (a) Hamas would agree to the ceasefire deal brokered by Egypt and Qatar and that ( b) Israel would then immediately launch attacks on Rafah, regardless. We might have hoped the concessions made by Hamas would cause Israel to desist from slaughtering thousands more ...
Placards and mourners outside the Kilbirnie Mosque following the Christchurch terror attack: MSD has terminated the Kaiwhakaoranga service, which has been used by 415 families since the attacks. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The Government’s pledge to only cut ‘back office’ staff rather than ‘frontline’ services is on increasingly shaky ground, with ...
There’s been a few smaller public transport announcements over the last week or so that I thought I’d cover in a single post. Fareshare I’ve long called for Auckland Transport to offer a way to enable employer-subsidised public transport options. The need for this took on even more importance ...
Parliament’s speaker had no option but to refer Green MP Julie Anne Genter to the Privileges Committee for her behaviour in the House last Wednesday evening. The incident, in which she crossed the floor to wave a book and yell at National Minister Matt Doocey, reflects poorly on Genter and ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Who likes being sneered at? Nobody. Worse yet, when the sneerer has their facts all wrong, and might well be an idiot.The sneer in question is The adults are in charge now, and it is a sneer offered in retort to criticism of this new Government, no matter how well ...
When in government, Labour pushed to extend the Parliamentary term to four years, to reduce accountability and our ability to vote out a bad government. And now, they're trying to do it through the member's ballot, with a Four-Year Parliamentary Term Legislation Bill. The bill at least requires a referendum ...
A ballot for a single Member's Bill was held today, and the following bill was drawn: Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill (Hūhana Lyndon) The bill would prevent the government from stealing Māori land in breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It ...
Simeon Brown, alongside Wayne Brown, is favouring a political figleaf now in exchange for loading up tens of millions in extra interest costs on Auckland ratepayers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s is pushing back hard at suggestions from Local Government Minister Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown ...
Buzz from the Beehive One headline-grabber from the Beehive yesterday was the OECD’s advice that the government must bring the Budget deficit under control or face higher interest rates. Another was the announcement of a $1.9 billion “investment” in Corrections over the next four years. In the best interests of ...
Chris Trotter writes – Had Zheng He’s fleet sailed east, not west, in the early Fifteenth Century, how different our world would be. There is little reason to suppose that the sea-going junks of the Ming Dynasty, among the largest and most sophisticated sailing vessels ever constructed, would have failed ...
David Farrar writes – Two articles give a useful contrast in balance. Both seek to be neutral explainer articles. This one in the Herald on Social Investment covers the pros and cons nicely. It links to critical pieces and talks about aspects that failed and aspects that are more ...
The tikanga regulations will compel law students to be taught that a system which does not conform with the rule of law is nevertheless law which should be observed and applied…Gary Judd KC writes – I have made a complaint to Parliament’s Regulation ...
The future of Te Huia, the train between Hamilton and Auckland, has been getting a lot of attention recently as current funding for it is only in place till the end of June. The government initially agreed to a five year trial, through to April 2026, but that was subject ...
TL;DR: Hamas has just agreed to Israel’s ceasefire plan. Nelson hospital’s rebuild has been cut back to save money. The OECD suggests New Zealand break up network monopolies, including in electricity. PM Christopher Luxon’s news conference on a prison expansion announcement last night was his messiest yet.Here’s my top six ...
A homicide in Ponsonby, a manhunt with a killer on the run. The nation’s leader stands before a press conference reassuring a frightened nation that he’ll sort it out, he’ll keep them safe, he’ll build some new prison spaces.Sorry what? There’s a scary dude on the run with a gun ...
Hi,I know it’s been awhile since there’s been any Webworm merch — and today that all changes!Over the last four months, I’ve been working with New Zealand artist Jess Johnson to create a series of t-shirts, caps and stickers that are infused with Webworm DNA — and as of right ...
The OECD’s chief economist yesterday laid it on the line for the new Government: bring the deficit under control or face higher Reserve Bank interest rates for longer. And to bring the deficit under control, she meant not borrowing for tax cuts. But there was more. Without policy changes—introducing a ...
After a hiatus of over four months Selwyn Manning and I finally got it together to re-start the “A View from Afar” podcast series. We shall see how we go but aim to do 2 episodes per month if possible. … Continue reading → ...
In 2008, the UK Parliament passed the Climate Change Act 2008. The law established a system of targets, budgets, and plans, with inbuilt accountability mechanisms; the aim was to break the cycle of empty promises and replace it with actual progress towards emissions reduction. The law was passed with near-universal ...
Buzz from the Beehive Local Water Done Well – let’s be blunt – is a silly name, but the first big initiative to put it into practice has gone done well. This success is reflected in the headline on an RNZ report:District mayors welcome Auckland’s new water deal with ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate ConnectionsA farmworker cleans the solar panels of a solar water pump in the village of Jagadhri, Haryana Country, India. (Photo credit: Prashanth Vishwanathan/ IWMI) Decisions made in India over the next few years will play a key role in global ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – The Children’s Minister, Karen Chhour, intends to repeal Section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 because it creates conflict between claimed Crown Treaty obligations and the child’s best interests. In her words, “Oranga Tamariki’s governing principles and its act should be colour ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. ...
Brian Easton writes – This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be (I will report on them ...
TL;DR:Winston Peters is reported to have won a budget increase for MFAT. David Seymour wanted his Ministry of Regulation to be three times bigger than the Productivity Commission. Simeon Brown is appointing a Crown Monitor to Watercare to protect the Claytons Crown Guarantee he had to give ratings agencies ...
The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. Carr had made highly ...
I could be a florist'Round the corner from Rye LaneI'll be giving daisies to craziesBut, baby, I'll wrap you up real safe Oh, I can give you flowers At the end of every dayFor the center of your table, a rainbowIn case you have people 'round to stay Depending on ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to May 12 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Finance Minister Nicola Willis will give a pre-budget speech on Thursday.Parliament sits from Question Time at 2pm on ...
The price of the foreign affairs “reset” is now becoming apparent, with Defence set to get a funding boost in the Budget. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed that it will be one of the few votes, apart from Health and Education and possibly Police, which will get an increase ...
Today New Zealand First will introduce a Member’s Bill that will protect women’s spaces. The ‘Fair Access to Bathrooms Bill’ will require, primarily in the interest and safety of women and girls, that all new non-domestic publicly accessible buildings provide separate, clearly demarcated, unisex and single sex bathrooms. This Bill ...
The Green Party is welcoming Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ continuation of Hon. James Shaw’s cross-party work on climate adaptation, now in the form of a Finance and Expenditure Committee Inquiry. ...
The National Government plans to cut 390 jobs at ACC, including roles in the areas of prevention of sexual violence, road safety and workplace safety. ...
The Government has been caught in opposition to evidence once again as it looks to usher in tried, tested and failed work seminar obligations for job-seeking beneficiaries. ...
The Green Party is welcoming the announcement by the Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop to approve most of the Wellington City Council’s District Plan recommendations. ...
David Seymour has failed to get the sweeping cuts he wanted to the free and healthy school lunch programme, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon says her Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill is an opportunity to right some past wrongs around the alienation of Māori land. ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
New Zealand voted in favour of a resolution broadening Palestine’s participation at the United Nations General Assembly overnight, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The resolution enhances the rights of Palestine to participate in the work of the UN General Assembly while stopping short of admitting Palestine as a full ...
Introduction Good morning. It’s a great privilege to be here at the 2024 Infrastructure Symposium. I was extremely happy when the Prime Minister asked me to be his Minister for Infrastructure. It is one of the great barriers holding the New Zealand economy back from achieving its potential. Building high ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced the upcoming Budget will include new funding of $571 million for Defence Force pay and projects. “Our servicemen and women do New Zealand proud throughout the world and this funding will help ensure we retain their services and expertise as we navigate an increasingly ...
New Zealand’s ability to cope with climate change will be strengthened as part of the Government’s focus to build resilience as we rebuild the economy, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “An enduring and long-term approach is needed to provide New Zealanders and the economy with certainty as the climate ...
Jobseeker beneficiaries who have work obligations must now meet with MSD within two weeks of their benefit starting to determine their next step towards finding a job, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “A key part of the coalition Government’s plan to have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker ...
A new standalone Social Investment Agency will power-up the social investment approach, driving positive change for our most vulnerable New Zealanders, Social Investment Minister Nicola Willis says. “Despite the Government currently investing more than $70 billion every year into social services, we are not seeing the outcomes we want for ...
Check against delivery Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you to outline the Coalition Government’s approach to our first Budget. Thank you Mark Skelly, President of the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce, together with your Board and team, for hosting me. I’d like to acknowledge His Worship ...
Your Excellency Ambassador Meredith, Members of the Diplomatic Corps and Ambassadors from European Union Member States, Ministerial colleagues, Members of Parliament, and other distinguished guests, Thank you everyone for joining us. Ladies and gentlemen - In diplomacy, we often speak of ‘close’ and ‘long-standing’ relations. ...
The Therapeutic Products Act (TPA) will be repealed this year so that a better regime can be put in place to provide New Zealanders safe and timely access to medicines, medical devices and health products, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello announced today. “The medicines and products we are talking about ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop, today released his decision on twenty recommendations referred to him by the Wellington City Council relating to its Intensification Planning Instrument, after the Council rejected those recommendations of the Independent Hearings Panel and made alternative recommendations. “Wellington notified its District Plan on ...
Rape Awareness Week (6-10 May) is an important opportunity to acknowledge the continued effort required by government and communities to ensure that all New Zealanders can live free from violence, say Ministers Karen Chhour and Louise Upston. “With 1 in 3 women and 1 in 8 men experiencing sexual violence ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government will be delivering a more efficient Healthy School Lunches Programme, saving taxpayers approximately $107 million a year compared to how Labour funded it, by embracing innovation and commercial expertise. “We are delivering on our commitment to treat taxpayers’ money ...
New research on the impacts of extreme weather on coastal marine habitats in Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay will help fishery managers plan for and respond to any future events, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. A report released today on research by Niwa on behalf of Fisheries New Zealand ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters will lead a broad political delegation on a five-stop Pacific tour next week to strengthen New Zealand’s engagement with the region. The delegation will visit Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Tuvalu. “New Zealand has deep and ...
There has been a material decline in gas production according to figures released today by the Gas Industry Co. Figures released by the Gas Industry Company show that there was a 12.5 per cent reduction in gas production during 2023, and a 27.8 per cent reduction in gas production in the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins tonight announced the recipients of the Minister of Defence Awards of Excellence for Industry, saying they all contribute to New Zealanders’ security and wellbeing. “Congratulations to this year’s recipients, whose innovative products and services play a critical role in the delivery of New Zealand’s defence capabilities, ...
Welcome to you all - it is a pleasure to be here this evening.I would like to start by thanking Greg Lowe, Chair of the New Zealand Defence Industry Advisory Council, for co-hosting this reception with me. This evening is about recognising businesses from across New Zealand and overseas who in ...
It is a pleasure to be speaking to you as the Minister for Digitising Government. I would like to thank Akolade for the invitation to address this Summit, and to acknowledge the great effort you are making to grow New Zealand’s digital future. Today, we stand at the cusp of ...
New Zealand is urging both Israel and Hamas to agree to an immediate ceasefire to avoid the further humanitarian catastrophe that military action in Rafah would unleash, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The immense suffering in Gaza cannot be allowed to worsen further. Both sides have a responsibility to ...
A new online data dashboard released today as part of the Government’s school attendance action plan makes more timely daily attendance data available to the public and parents, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. The interactive dashboard will be updated once a week to show a national average of how ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced Rosemary Banks will be New Zealand’s next Ambassador to the United States of America. “Our relationship with the United States is crucial for New Zealand in strategic, security and economic terms,” Mr Peters says. “New Zealand and the United States have a ...
The Government is considering creating a new tier of minerals permitting that will make it easier for hobby miners to prospect for gold. “New Zealand was built on gold, it’s in our DNA. Our gold deposits, particularly in regions such as Otago and the West Coast have always attracted fortune-hunters. ...
Minister for Trade Todd McClay today announced that New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will commence negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA). Minister McClay met with his counterpart UAE Trade Minister Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi in Dubai, where they announced the launch of negotiations on a ...
New Zealand Sign Language Week is an excellent opportunity for all Kiwis to give the language a go, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. This week (May 6 to 12) is New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Week. The theme is “an Aotearoa where anyone can sign anywhere” and aims to ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
An Australian Strategic Policy Institute report says Pillar Two could raise the industry to state of the art capability - or "crush" it "under the weight of the globe's biggest player". ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marlene Longbottom, Associate Professor, Indigenous Education & Research Centre, James Cook University ShutterstockThis article contains information on deaths in custody and the violence experienced by First Nations people in encounters with the Australian carceral system. It also contains references to ...
“Instead of following along countries that are investing in death and better ways of killing people faster, we need to invest in life and in making Aotearoa a fair, just and equitable place where everyone has what they need for a dignified life.” ...
MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI, TPM MP FOR TAI TOKERAU This Government will not waver in its mission to exterminate Māori. CHRISTOPHER LUXON Oh well look you know I don’t think that hard-working Kiwis want to hear language like that. It’s just really unhelpful rhetoric. My Government is genuinely committed to advancing outcomes ...
The body positivity movement started with women confronting the unrealistic expectations and unrepresentative portrayals of them in media and advertising. Men weren’t part of it … their bodies hadn’t been sexualised to the same extremes and they didn’t really need it. But now that’s changed. And in a warped sort ...
The New Zealand comedy legend takes us through her life in television, including the time she hugged Elton John and the unshakeable legacy of a girl named Lyn. In 1981, Ginette McDonald stood on the stage of Auckland’s St James Theatre and directly addressed Queen Elizabeth II. It was a ...
An essay by Lily Duval from the just-released anthology Otherhood: Essays on being childless, childfree and child adjacent.I was 22 when my friend Alice gave birth in the living room of our pokey Addington flat. She laboured in the blow-up pool for hours. Garish fish swam along the inflated ...
Ella Borrie on the best books about motherhood she’s come across so far. Over the past few years I’ve been drawn to books about motherhood. I’m fascinated by the joys and horrors of becoming a parent. The question of children also feels more pressing than it used to. It’s like ...
Out of gift ideas for mum? You can’t go wrong with a bottle of toilet cleaner and a new squeegee. Emily Writes is the writer and editor of Emily Writes Weekly. This week marks five years since I published a post on The Spinoff about Mother’s Day marketing titled ‘A ...
My husband is posted overseas for 12 months and I’m armed with an expensive, newfangled vibrator. Will I miss him? The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.A few days after my husband leaves, a new sex toy arrives at the front door. Nestled ...
Jaimie Baird’s new book Here Today Gone Tomorrow is a record of four decades of graffiti and street art in Wellington, told through more than 1,200 photographs. He spoke with Joel MacManus about what inspired the book. How did you first get interested in photographing street art? I remember ...
Editor Madeleine Chapman looks back at a busy week where food of all political leanings dominated. Sometimes you’re just going about your week thinking you’ve got a good handle on what might be coming as far as news topics and then someone (usually a politician) says something so ridiculous that ...
In a week of cold rain and frost, the climate in courtroom four upstairs at the Invercargill courthouse was simmering with restrained indignation. At times it felt like the famous Mexican standoff scene from Reservoir Dogs, or, as someone watching the proceedings described it, there was so much throwing of ...
A banner notification alerts me to the fact that I’ve received an Instagram message from @felicity.loves. She always comments on my posts. I shouldn’t have opened the message, but clicked on the notification before rationalising this. OMG! Are you in Wellys? X I debate not replying, but Instagram will inform ...
In Melbourne’s hardscrabble western suburbs where AFL – Aussie rules football – is a state religion, Callum Donaldson has been quietly grafting away, four months into an odyssey that he hopes will take him to another promised land: the NRL. It was a solid 2023 for the softly spoken 20-year-old ...
Pacific Media Watch Television New Zealand Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to investigative journalism and Pacific communities in a ceremony at Government House, reports 1News. She has been the Pacific correspondent for 1News since 2002, breaking many ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Tuesday’s budget will respond to the deepening public agitation over Australia’s housing shortages by pouring new money into crisis accommodation for women and children, social housing and infrastructure. A specially-convened national cabinet late Friday ticked ...
By Kaneta Naimatu in Suva Journalists in the Pacific region play an important role as the “eyes and ears on the ground” when it comes to reporting the climate crisis, says the European Union’s Pacific Ambassador Barbara Plinkert. Speaking at The University of the South Pacific (USP) on World Press ...
Aldora Itunu is back in the Black Ferns squad after a three-year absence. The last of her 24 internationals was an underwhelming loss to France (7-29) in Castres to conclude the disastrous 2021 Northern Tour. The powerhouse prop won a Rugby World Cup in 2017 and thought she was done. ...
The fight to control major transport policy and projects in Auckland has burst into the open again, with councillors rejecting Mayor Wayne Brown’s latest attempt to steer things more under his influence. Councillors from the left and right broke ranks on the mayor’s bid to control Auckland Transport more directly ...
Exhausted by the general election campaign, horrified by the twilight zone of coalition negotiations, distracted by the silly season and waiting for the honeymoon to begin, Raw Politics has been in hibernation since October. From today, we’re back. Our weekly political video show and podcast returns for ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk Authorities in the small town of Boulouparis have commemorated Armistice Day on May 8 with a new memorial honouring New Zealand soldiers who were stationed in New Caledonia during World War II. The ceremony took place in the township on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Dehm, Senior lecturer, international migration and refugee law, University of Technology Sydney The High Court unanimously ruled today that the Australian government can keep asylum seekers in immigration detention indefinitely in cases where they do not “voluntarily” cooperate with their own ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Munro, Lecturer, Creative Industries and Digital Media, University of South Australia Twenty-four hours after the release of Macklemore’s pro-Palestine protest song Hind’s Hall on social media on May 7, the video had already notched up over 24 million views. In ...
Failing to anticipate the complexity of the consenting system is being cited as the the current builder's shortcomings, an Infrastructure Commission review says. ...
Failing to anticipate the complexity of the consenting system is being cited as the the current builder's shortcomings, an Infrastructure Commission review says. ...
350 Aotearoa is calling the Environment Select Committee’s decision to allow oral submissions from just 40% of individual, unique submitters who asked to speak to the committee ‘a disgraceful blight to democracy’. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Helal, Assistant Dean (Sustainability), The University of Melbourne Dubai skylineAleksandarPasaric/Pexels Since ancient times, people have built structures that reach for the skies – from the steep spires of medieval towers to the grand domes of ancient cathedrals and mosques. Today ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edward Musole, PhD Law Student, University of New England Girts Ragelis/ShutterstockRecent trends show Australians are increasingly buying wearables such as smartwatches and fitness trackers. These electronics track our body movements or vital signs to provide data throughout the day, with ...
Papua New Guinea experienced a significant earthquake on 24 March in East Sepik and there has also been recent flooding there and in surrounding provinces. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yousuf Mohammed, Dermatology researcher, The University of Queensland Maridav/Shutterstock You wake up, stagger to the bathroom and gaze into the mirror. No, you’re not imagining it. You’ve developed face wrinkles overnight. They’re sleep wrinkles. Sleep wrinkles are temporary. But as your ...
The Environment Select Committee has just announced that 60 percent of individuals who asked to speak at the hearings will not be heard. This equates to almost 700 people who made individual submissions and more than 1000 more who made a form submission. ...
The Royal New Zealand Ballet is performing Swan Lake around the country. What kind of dream does the ballet sell?Before going to see the Royal New Zealand Ballet perform Swan Lake, I had about as much familiarity with the plot of this ballet as could be expected from having ...
A new poem by Auckland poet Eamonn Tee. High Tide at Local Maxima It is only going to get worse. The streams will be narrow and fickle. The week will bend and buckle like a pot-bellied waist. You will make it to the weekend with one ...
The New Zealand entrepreneur behind beauty business Ethique is gearing up to launch a new eco-venture. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Our thirst for a tasty bevvy is insatiable, but it comes with a hefty plastic price for the planet: 580 billion ...
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 James by Percival Everett (Mantle, $38) A retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from ...
By Kamna Kumar in Suva Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Henry Puna stressed the importance of media freedom and its link to the climate and environmental crisis at the 2024 World Press Freedom Day event organised by the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme. Under the theme “A Planet for ...
Tara Ward previews a new local TV series offering alternative visions of motherhood. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. A woman is clambering up the side of her two-story house, clinging desperately to a drainpipe. Nearby, her child is perched on the ...
Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) is supportive of the cross-party approach to climate adaptation announced by the Minister of Climate Change today. ...
The Sustainable Business Council (SBC) and Climate Leaders Coalition (CLC) welcome today’s announcement from Government around a bipartisan inquiry into an enduring climate adaptation framework for New Zealand. ...
The Free Speech Union welcomes the decision by the Department of Internal Affairs, and Minister Brooke Van Velden, to abandon proposals to further regulate online speech. ...
Its new building in Wellington will not be nearly big enough for all its records, and it has also run out of money to build its new storage facility in Levin. ...
BusinessNZ is congratulating the Minister of Climate Change for his work in achieving cross-party consensus for a way forward on climate adaptation. ...
Recent research reveals the repeal of smokefree measures is not only bad for our health, but also the economy. The Government has repealed various smokefree measures to ensure it keeps collecting $1.2 billion a year in tobacco taxes, in order to pay for tax cuts already being delivered to ...
The club’s surprisingly good season is built on the desire to prove a random A-League YouTuber wrong… and a few other factors.“There’s no way that Wellington Phoenix play finals this year. I can’t see it happening at all.” Those are the words of Lachlan Raeside, an Australian football content ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By César Albarrán-Torres, Senior Lecturer, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology Apple TV+ As one of billions of bilingual individuals in the world, it disappoints me when a film or TV show with characters of a non-English-speaking background is ...
The under-utilised course is a waste of space, and with a little political will, it could be turned into something better. For the duration of her stay in Wellington, my long-suffering cousin listened to me rant about golf courses. They’re bad for the environment: water intensive and pesticide heavy. They ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Ruppanner, Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of The Future of Work Lab, Podcast at MissPerceived, The University of Melbourne Shutterstock A recent report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows US fertility rates dropped 2% in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Corderoy, Medical doctor and PhD candidate studying involuntary psychiatric treatment, School of Psychiatry, UNSW Sydney shop_py/Shutterstock Picture two people, both suffering from a serious mental illness requiring hospital admission. One was born in Australia, the other in Asia. Hopefully, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Treby, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, RMIT University P.j.Hickox, Shutterstock Peatlands store more carbon per square metre than any other ecosystem on Earth. These waterlogged, mossy bogs beat even dense rainforests for their ability to act as carbon reservoirs. Under the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Goss, Adjunct Associate Professor, Health Research Institute, University of Canberra Government spending on health has been growing so rapidly that a decade ago the then health minister Peter Dutton called it “unmanageable” and “unsustainable”. Health spending grew in real terms by ...
New Zealand's largest electricity distributor is warning the country to hurry up with controls around charging electric vehicles or face unnecessary bills running into the billions. ...
New Zealanders have been asked to conserve energy this morning to combat a possible electricity shortfall, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in this extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. A call to conserve power New Zealand is facing a possible electricity shortfall, with people up ...
Writer Rebecca K Reilly breaks down the national book awards. What are the Ockhams?The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are our annual national awards for books published for adults, and have existed in this form since 2016. There are four categories: Fiction, Poetry, General Non-fiction and Illustrated Non-fiction. There ...
Wellington City Council should keep its 34% ownership share in Wellington International Airport, argue Unions Wellington spokespeople Finn Cordwell and Ashok Jacob. Insanity, as the saying goes, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Wellington City Council (WCC) is yet again proposing to dispose ...
New Zealand’s largest book publisher has undergone drastic changes this week, leaving its future role in local publishing uncertain. Two of the most recognisable local publishers in New Zealand are among those restructured out of Penguin Random House, it was announced this week. Head of publishing Claire Murdoch will leave ...
The Black Ferns Sevens appeared to be a mile behind Australia at the halfway point of the 2023-24 SVNS international circuit. Winless in three tournaments, a cup quarter-final exit in Perth was one of their worst results. To add insult to injury, talismanic skipper Sarah Hirini had been ruled out ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A,DIV,A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Friday 10 May appeared first on Newsroom. ...
If the AV mob are at higher risk of getting infected by Covid, which is just about a given, and we can see that the rule breakers are also the same AV mob, then how good is the home isolating of these same people going to work out? My guess they won't be keen on following the rules and who and how can the MoH or local GP's keep them at home and not just do whatever they want. They look likely to be a significant proportion of the forthcoming sick people and contact tracing is already falling apart.
Yes, you’re right, & this is a very real & very scary prospect.
It means we all need to get our booster shots and avoid known anti-vaxers like the plage many of them will be carrying.
Also means continual handwashing / hand sanitising & mask-wearing will continue to be needed by everyone, really.
🙄 *plague
"That's only compounded by the fact that Renwick's optimistic view of the future still entails a certain level of disaster. He told the Nature survey that 2 degrees of warming was most likely – more optimistic than most of his colleagues, but a prediction that would still have dire implications for human civilisation."
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/grappling-with-dread-on-the-frontlines-of-the-climate-fight
Best case scenario and its still grim.
Optimism not shared by experts at COP26. They got together all the blah blah assurances, targets etc at the completion and came up with……2.4deg.
Now’s the time for the inventors & engineers & venture capitalists & govts to all be pulling their fingers out & coming up with varioys forms of mechanical carbon scrubbers & to be sequestering huge amounts in rocks n stuff.
The ever-short-sighted, arrogant & selfish human ape is still too busy with making money & creature comforts for no other creature than itself to see its own extinction or significant reduction in numbers becoming a real prospect on the compartively near horizon.
It’s almost like Nature has started coming up with its own solutions to the problem of so many humans outcompeting them & being so dangerous to other life forms. 😐
😡 My kingdom for a good pre-Submit Comment proof- reader! 😰
My current one’s fking useless! 😠
I suggest you follow the advice in the ad.
"You should have gone to Specsavers"
No Gezza "my Kingdom for a horse" Richard the 111 ended up in a carpark.
We guessed what happened All been there lately.
Now’s the time for the inventors & engineers & venture capitalists & govts to all be pulling their fingers out & coming up with varioys forms of mechanical carbon scrubbers & to be sequestering huge amounts in rocks n stuff.
And in the below-deck engineering spaces all these things, and more, are being worked on. Out of sight.
Meanwhile up on deck the performative sabre rattling, flag waving and siren wailing continue to serve an entirely different purpose.
“Meanwhile up on deck the performative sabre rattling, flag waving and siren wailing continue to serve an entirely different purpose.”
……………………………..
Being, in your opinion, what, exactly, Red? o_O
Years ago I noticed that if I wrote something on the alarmist, fearmongering side of CC there was lots of noisy engagement. If I write to the solution side – /crickets
Understood, I think.
How about just put it in a nutshell, pour moi? And don’t engage with your usual critics? I’m just curious.
My starting point is these five pre-conditions:
While no-one can predict the future in detail, it's reasonable to project by 2100 that most people will live in high energy, high tech urban centres. We already have a lot of knowledge and experience in building far more liveable, human centred habitats. All of humanity will be able to access what we currently regard in the developed world as an ‘upper middle class’ standard of living in many senses, but likely different in others.
High intensity industrial zones will exploit advances in materials and processes to deliver the totally decarbonised energy and closed loop resource use needed to sustain modernity. The trend will be toward an accelerated de-coupling of human demands on the natural world.
Surrounding them will be layered zones of agricultural and managed landscapes serving a range of purposes. A sophisticated permaculture plan but on a regional scale.
At least half of the ice-free planet will revert to wilderness in some form.
To achieve this we need around 5 – 10 times more electricity and process heat than we currently consume.
The only technological pathway that delivers on this is the next generation of advanced nuclear fission reactors that are on a fast path toward being delivered this decade. /nutshell
.
Read it … always impressed by your honesty, realism, intellectual courage & intellectual rigour.
Don't always agree with you, RL … but far more often than not I do.
Should be a reply to your 12:32 comment (below).
Would also help if humans could greatly reduce their love affair with the automobile. Not just increasing supply of electricity, but reducing the current massive demand for devices that eat the future with their insatiable demand. Personal transport is costed all wrong. The prevalence of huge SUV's on NZ roads is a completely avoidable and unnecessary environmental crime that only serves to bolster the egos of the rich.
That's pretty much going to happen as the convergence of EV and AI will shift us towards a 'mobility as a service' model of transport.
God yes. Just one look at my local Suzuki & Mitsubishi dealer’s front lot is enuf. The vehicles just keep getting bigger & bigger every freakin year. Backing out of an angle park in the local main drag shopping area is a nerve-wracking ‘stick your car’s arse out into the traffic’ exercise because half the time you can’t see thru the high up smoky windows of the bloody swanky “truck” parked next to you.
Average cars have now got to ridiculous sizes.
/crickets
As I said – I came to the conclusion a while back that many people who make a lot of noise about CC have no real interest whatsoever in solving it.
What they really want to achieve is something else.
Not crickets here, avec moi. Just disappeared becos I had an appointment at Welly Hospital at 11 am, & just got home.
I find your above comments very interesting.
But it was the “something else” you refer to that I really wanted put in a nutshell. Apologies for not making myself clearer.
I should have made it clearer that my comment above was not directed to you.
But still this is pretty much how it goes.
Rest assured there is another one who reads what you write, not always agreeing with it.
The crickets observation is reflected down thread with wekas comment that folk basically don't care about the environment, or at least not enough to act.
Yes – oddly enough weka and I both agree on this point, even though we come at it from completely opposite directions.
But I'd suggest it's wrong to think people 'don't care about the environment'. They do – but they understandably care about themselves and their family more.
And interestingly it's the wealthy countries where people actively care for the environment the most.
And no – I really do not necessarily want people to ‘agree with me’. More than anything the value I get from being here comes with seeing people learn to speak their own minds clearly and honestly.
Its comforting to know all will be well in another 80 years.
A brave new world indeed….meanwhile..
@B
Meanwhile … what ? Any suggestions?
Hard for me to envisage any significant, lasting changes happening to the way societies operate globally, tbh.
Problem is with the nature of the human ape. Too many too easily led & manipulated by the equivalents of the gorillas’ Silverbacks.
"I came to the conclusion a while back that many people who make a lot of noise about CC have no real interest whatsoever in solving it. What they really want to achieve is something else."
OK. So the accusation here is of a hidden agenda to 'end capitalism' or whatever. But hidden agenda accusations are easy to make, and because they are essentially inventions, they can always be made against whatever target is the enemy du jour.
Here's a different one for example – and it's nonsense too: I came to the conclusion a while back that many people who are very focused only on technology solutions to CC have no real interest in solving it. What they really want to achieve is something else – no change to an economic system that encourages infinite growth and has turbocharged CO2 emissions by pursuing profit at all costs.
Best to steer clear of intellectually questionable styles of argument imo. The politicisation of the climate change response is gong to be a disaster, so best not to add to it.
That's a decent point well made.
Gezza….much easier to stop using fossil fuels in the first place.
Solar is now massively cheaper and than it used to be and methods of storing solar power are being developed rapidly. That is the technology we need to concentrate on.
Carbon scrubbers etc. are ambulances at the bottom of the cliff.
Carbon scrubbers are very inefficient .People can all use less Carbon .Changing people's behaviour is the most logical way to reduce Carbon. When purchasing if everyone bought low carbon emissions product,reduced unnecessary travel,over indulgences to much food(we are an obese society) reduced our clothes purchases ,stop buying junk that falls to bits it would be easier to recycle. Plastic is every where ,only recyclable plastic should be allowed. It will cost more in some cases but using less will actually save money. Plastic bottles in Europe are much lighter thinner and the likes of Germany pay a deposit 20c € refundable on the thinner Plastic bottles.Also Europe limits the amount of sugar in soft drinks and juices they taste much nicer too.
Oh I forgot the richest 1% are responsible for 35% of all global carbon emissions.So they or we need to some how reduce their massive carbon footprint. Super yacht,private jet.taxes ,mansion ,luxury taxes.food and clothing waste taxes.
Friggen he'll that box is hyper sensitive.
user name.
Morning Weka,any chance this problem will get sorted,it been sometime now.
More problematic is the mobile paste box, which works well enough to pop up but not well enough to accept pasted text via mobile controls.
Without checking it looks like the javascript which tries to do something sophisticated with the contents of a paste also throws an unhandled exception.
Alternatively it might be detecting a paste in the paste control and popping up again ready to accept a paste (to which it will popup again).
I don't think the javascript paste control which prevents the built in browser function of pasting is the best use of javascript I have seen.
afaik, Lynn sees it as a user end issue (in the software at the user end), not something he can change, but I will ask again.
Ta.
Carbon scrubbers are very inefficient .
Efficiency doesn't matter if the energy source is both cheap and carbon free. And especially not if the end product – in this case reduced CO2 – is of existential value.
Added to that Bearded Git, is a need to develop regenerative farming, limit nitrates and work with nature using her well developed and balanced systems instead of industrialized mono systems which destroy the very soil we depend on.
Like our fight against covid, many intertwined approaches, methods and systems used together will be what we have, as sadly agreeing a safety margin is still not achieved. 1.5 is very bad 2.4 pushing disaster.
The most useful advances have been in applied biology, so far. imo.
Looking back, we are sickened by the excesses of Rome, but we do not live very differently. We wonder at cities and even civilizations lost. The answer usually loss of water, depleted resources, or religious wars. We are in some ways slow to learn. So the pot gets hotter.
Does Renwick (or the other climate scientists contributing) have a fag waving, sabre rattling agenda?…are they spending their working lives on a false mission?…somehow I dont think so.
https://twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1460655266823905280?s=21
I can envision a whole industry of house raising contractors and business springing up in the near future. Lift housing off the ground and put them up on piles. Let the water go underneath without damaging the house and drainage specialists to get rid of the sea water.
A near certainty nothing will be done to change the world away from it's current trajectory. Like the Housing crisis nobody wants to change, we will have to adapt.
I am no engineer but how would you put a house on piles without incurring astronomical costs?
cheaper than building a new house?
I have made a conscious effort to not get involved in the is the govt handling covid well arguments.
I realise as a govt it is a shit hand to be dealt.
I saw an interview this morning with Hipkins about vax cert validity and expiration and needing boosters to renew and it seems they haven't even thought about it.
Apologies. But my patience is running thin.
This may be a stupid question. But does anyone know why our govt can't just talk to aus and copy their template?
Because Oz has handled Covid so well ChrisT?
Australia 73 deaths/million. NZ 7 deaths/million.
Yes they did handle it badly.
Now some states have a working vax certs app
Working together is better than fart arsing around with no clue like Hipkins interview came across
Australians pay more taxes have a better funded health system have both Federal and State bearaucracy to run better responses maybe you can volunteer by paying 45% of your income in federal tax then pay your state taxes as well as higher local body rates .
Fair enough. But all the more reason to borrow/nick their more well funded tech.
She ain't like they will say no.
They want the trans tas bubble back as much as we do.
Is it at all possible that the kings of underarm ,sandpaper, and 501s dont like us and wont share??
The passes are valid for 6 months to allow for boosters being mandatory if that's where cabinet lands.
My guess as to whether a booster will be required will depend on factors like spread, medical advice, overseas practice, and particularly if the vaccine course recommendation changes from 2 doses at least 3 weeks apart with an extra dose for immunocompromised folk 8 weeks after dose 2 (as currently) to 3 doses with dose 2 after 3-12 weeks and dose 3 at least 6 months after dose 2 for most people and an extra dose for the immunocompromised folk 8 weeks after dose 2.
You see I read those numbers and get it.
Fine.
Are they expecting the whole of nz with aged population. And no smart phone. Disabled people. Low education to do the same?
As again acknoeding the govt has had a a tough thing to be dealt is bloody stupid
Chris snowflake was the right whingers go to put down of socialists looks like its bounced off a come home to roost.
Honestly
(sorry to be naggy)
It was a pin in the arse trying to get the country 90% vaxed.
Now we have to do it all over again for people having to have a booster to renew their vax cert that runs out in a time frame Hipkins couldn't name
Chri T Well if we want our economy to flourish and our underfunded health system to function these are the sacrifices we need to make.Better vaccines are on the way better antiviral treatments are on the way.
Provided Covid does outsmart out pace our scientist's.
It sound like you would like lockdown to continue or open the floodgates and damage our health system and economy at the same time. Or maybe your just channeling Brian Tamaki.
The country is basically 90% vaxed.
I'm vaxed.
Everyone I know is vaxed.
I don't care if some weirdo standing 2 meters away isn't vaxed. Because I'm vaxed. Delta is here to stay.
Just open the door. You can't live hiding under rocks for ever.
Sorry
Just suddenly realised I have now got involved in things I was purposefully avoiding.
Lol
If I was annoying I apologise!
irritating how easy it is to get dragged in, eh
You may be vaxxed children and people with underlying health conditions the hesitant etc.
We need to be careful and not reckless.
a link would help. Or even just where you heard it. Vague questions get vague answers.
Sorry
Hoskings show..And AM
Google newstalkzb week on demand. Think 10 past 7. But might have got timings wrong. Haven't time now but will try to find a proper link to audio later. End of day. Was on national media. I also appreciate my interpretation of interview is obviously not going to match other people's. Especially on here.
Just downloaded our vaccine passports – easy process but we were already set up in Real Me/My Covid Record. PDF which can be saved on your phone, printed, valid for 6 months.
And after the 6 months then what happens.
What do you need for another.
How long does that one last
Who isuppossed to use it to screen people and how does it work
.
After maybe 6 hours of steady, near horizontal rain, driven by a howling Southerly of the kind that only Wellington seems to deliver.
Where do your pals shelter in that Gezza?
A question I sometimes ask myself, Patricia. Both the ducks & the pukekos tendvto just "disappear" when the weather gets foul. It's tempting to think of them huddled up & shivering in the foliage somewhere but all the waterbirds keep themselves groomed daily & thus their feathers are waterproof & dry, & probably keep them warm as they just hunker down wherever their sleeping nests are.
Once the rain stops, or lets off a little, the birds soon appear on either side of the stream, or swimming in the middle of it. Neither ducks nor pooks seem much bothered by inclement weather.
Stuffs story “Covid 19: freedoms shrinking “ this morning has a very succinct sum up of how vulnerable the antis are to getting Covid. At the 90% vaccination rate, of 10,000 people , the 9000 vaccinated will have 675 Cases of whom 23 will be hospitalised but of the 1000 unvaccinated, 500 will get Covid and 50 will be hospitalised. That is why we cannot have teachers etc anywhere near us or our tamariki because 50% of them will be carriers at some time. Even then the the hospitalisation numbers are a bit scary meaning for every 10,000 people there will be 73 cases, 23 for the vacced 50 for the unvaxxed , albeit not all at the same time but still a lot of people for small DHBs of say 150,000 people that’s 1095 patients of whom about 10 will die, maybe less as the vacced have a lower rate of mortality. That is pretty bloody scary.
That is why the unvaccinated must be ring-fenced and not allowed to mingle.
To add to that, children are disease vectors at the best of times, and with education being compulsory for children so having to attend school classes at some point, even if Cabinet did nothing about mandates, many schools would end up mandating vaccinations anyway as a health and safety measure for teachers following a risk assessment. At least a mandate means schools don't have to work it out for themselves or deal with the legal fallout so much.
Why please is the edit function not working, and on my iPad it does not allow me to directly reply to another reply? Is it my ineptitude or is it just that my first shot of 5G is internally fighting with my second one of the Anti-Christ venom.
on an iphone there is a choice of Mobile or Desktop versions of the site. One has functional reply buttons, the other doesn't. I switch back and forth between the two (readability, commenting). You could see if that works on an ipad, switching buttons at the bottom of every page.
Don't know about the edit function sorry, but see if the other version works better for that too.
I get the impression that the edit function has been disabled? Not present on Chrome desktop.
For all the Sinophiles and Sinophobes out there.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/taiwan-china-wargames/
A whole lot of what ifs.
A marvel of modern multi-media by the looks of it. I'll definitely read.
(BTW it's entirely possible to be anti-CCP without being a 'Sino-phobe'. For a start it assumes that all Chinese people love the CCP.)
Maybe I should have added a 🙂
The majority are pretty damned happy with the current Chinese government.
I'm sure you're aware of the Ash Harvard survey
https://ash.harvard.edu/files/ash/files/final_policy_brief_7.6.2020.pdf
Why would that be surprising from a nation where your only option is to love the CCP?
And ensured you completed your assigned daily readings of the Xi Xinping Thought app?
Why the heck don't they charge people at the time they leave MIQ like a hotel does then we wouldn't need to have the costs of the debt collectors? The chance of collecting the old overdue amounts is getting slimmer and slimmer. It really does show up their lack of business experience as I can foresee a large amount of bad debts being written off in the future.
'Incomplete, inaccurate data' behind 14,000 returnees not invoiced for MIQ stay, $36m not collected (msn.com)
Jimmy who gives your just pathetically nit picking .In the overall Covid response $100 billion plus its very small brickies and nit picking time wasting chasing a small amount . Those bearaucracy could spend their time much better elsewhere.When you look at govt money being wasted South Cantrbury Finance $ 1.6 billion Auckland conference Centre $400 million Clyde Dam $2 billion probably $4 billion in today's money its chicken feed it would take a bird brain to figure $30 million is worth worrying about.
Well, why don't we make the service free again. After all we have money to spend and waste, and surely every one knows that 30 million is peanuts, its after all only taxpayers money that gets wasted. Right?
Are you not constantly complaining about the easy ride given to tax cheats and the frenzy at any hint if benefit cheating. Jimmy just seems to be applying that principal to people with the means to go overseas (who mostly aren't beneficiaries). Its hard to see the need of selective interpretation, though I would note applying it as a tax which gets handed on might send a few MIQ hotels bankrupt when they can't collect that 3 grand bill off the same. Of course the govt will easily collect whats due, paid on leaving or not.
That's the attitude…it's only a small amount of someone else's (tax payers as Sabine says) money, plenty more where that came from. You missed the point that they would not need to bother chasing the debts if they applied a bit of normal business sense and billed them at the time to a credit card.
Maybe they weren't focused on running it as a business.
Shocking thought, I know. Everything exists only for profit. To prioritise anything else is cray-cray…
The PM from this link doesn't agree with you, & believes that those using MIQ should pay, and compared this cost to student loans. So if it wasn't worth the effort why did the government implement the policy and then increase the fee ?
https://www.1news.co.nz/2021/03/11/miq-debt-collection-regime-similar-to-student-loan-pm-says-as-people-able-to-leave-nz-without-paying/
"The aim of the charges is to share the costs in a way that fairly reflects the benefits to both the New Zealand public of having a robust system, and those who leave and enter the country."
https://www.miq.govt.nz/being-in-managed-isolation/charges-for-managed-isolation/
Are student loans a business?
MIQ was initially started with the objective of isolating returnees. They tacked on a cost recovery system after that.
Sure, cost recovery is "important" to greater or lesser degrees, but it's not like "oh, we need this money to come in otherwise the staff don't get paid", like an actual business.
It's not a business. It's not even full cost recovery. Sure, implementing the new charging system had some issues. But you change the requirements on a large project, shit's going to go wrong.
My response was centred around why the govt placed so much effort into setting up and announcing this policy, and now we see that it has been left to rust away without any intentions of living up to the announce policy.
I am only quoting the pm in her response re student loans, her words to support the charge.
What your replies have to do with my comments about MIQ not being run as a business, I don't know.
I mean, hell, they wiped off $135mil in student loans last year.
My initial response was directed to comment 10.1, not to your response, my mistake.
But as we have engaged in conservation. It was not rocket science to setup a system in recovery/collect the costs that the government was seeking. It is IMO an issue of fairness and trust, to those who have paid or were charged. The govt was going to charge those entering the country under certain conditions as per their announced policy. It there was no intention for this to be carried out, then why bother in the policy ?
And I see we have no ability to edit a comment, or change our response to the correct comment, which can lead to confusion or mis communication ☹️
Of course there was an intention to collect. Just as every pilot intends to give their passengers a smooth and speedy flight. But sometimes these priorities take a back seat to not crashing the plane.
The priority of MIQ was to keep covid out. It failed at that, possibly because we didn't send new arrivals to actual internment camps instead of hotels, but it did a good effort. Money, schmoney.
They don't have to run it as a business making a profit, but just as a "user pays" where the burden doesn't fall on the poor old tax payer yet again would be nice.
Would have been nicer if it had worked at keeping covid out a few more months.
What I don't get about this is your 'user pays' is actually going to turn MIQ into govt debt collectors. If it passes on the cost its going to be easier to collect the fee off MIQ than the users, so handing on default risk. Why would anybody think thats a good idea?
I don't understand your comment. I'm simply saying if they charged people as they arrive or leave MIQ there would be no debts to collect so problem solved….simple.
Have a think about who is owed the debt and who is collecting it. I don't think we want to turn MIQ facilities into debt collectors, they should be focused on protecting the border.
So are you saying MIQ stays should be free? ie. basically paid for by tax payers? As many of these people travelling can certainly afford overseas trips and MIQ.
No, I'm just saying the govt should be happy to collect its own debts. Responsibility for debt collection is not something MIQ facilities need on their hands right now either.
Good article in the Australian The Age, regarding the August position statement from Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP):
Recognising and addressing the mental health needs of people experiencing Gender Dysphoria / Gender Incongruence
Written by Dr Sandra Pertot: "Now I'm hopeful we can talk about teens and gender"
The article talks about the rise in FTM patients, and receiving her first formal complaint after making this podcast.
More meaningless comedy from Collins. Some really great lines in here.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300456343/covid19-nz-judith-collins-says-vaccine-passes-shouldnt-be-needed-for-long-not-sure-if-she-would-use-them-if-she-owned-a-bar
Jeebus that woman is an idiot
It occurs to me, there are two very conflicting, diametrically opposed desires operating amongst most of us.
Page after page of desires to get back to enjoying hospitality, the 'economy' to get going again, BAU.
And, we must reduce out carbon footprint/stop ruining the planet.
I called in on a previous employer yesty and sat while a few had lunch.
Vege burgers and fries. The fries are from the U.S., packaged in 2 kg lots in a single use plastic bag. 5 x bag in a waxed cardboard box. Moved to Auckland, trucked to a distribution hub, trucked to Palmy food wholesaler, trucked to site.
Burger buns, made in Auckland, each layer seperated by a thin, single use plastic bag, ditto the distribution.
The greens, in this case a slaw, made in Auckland, 2kgs in a heavy wall, single use vac-pac bag, ditto distribution.
The aioli was made in house, but with eggs from Auckland, and canola oil made goodness knows where, garlic processed in Auckland….
The point is we need a radical shift in our consumer behaviour, basically far less of it. Trigger warning- this includes our coffees.
Despite 35 years of neo liberal thinking, we can't just sub-contract our way out of destroying the planet.
Rant over.
That would be great, just sometimes not practical. Not everybody lives near a vege pad of a size that feeds a family all year round.
Also many companies are making bulk deals that include minimum delivery so that they get a better price and everybody out there can afford their product. Health and Safety law and regulation will demand the overuse of packaging (my all time pet hate). The trading of food returns taxes and GST….there is admittingly no need to import unless our cows are being part of an export deal in exchange….perhaps..
The taxes taken to pay back those 16 Billion dollars will not create an environment of fast paced self-sufficiency and funds to improve waste water etc. In fact I have a bet that after the next election GST will go up by 2%.
We could go hundreds of years back but this means the deal between ordinary folks and the government is off. The exchange was land for convenience of mass distribution and access to food and goods. After the royalty was killed off. Most will choose convenience. If we are to go back we need the land to support ourselves. Provided we have the skills to work it and the land is arable.
So where is the middle? And why are we building houses on the best land in NZ to grow food? Why are we allowing waste water to go into the waterways and sea?
No problems with anything you say.
What I am getting at is the business model is broken, no longer fit for purpose.
The chips are a prime example. Buy spuds from a localish producer, delivery in reusable 20kg hessian sacks. Process and add value in-house. Money stays in local economy and school age person can get good knife skills.
Food outlets can specialize rather than the 50 item menu that is commonplace now.
School aged person will cost you 20 NZD per hour, plus kiwi saver, plus holiday pay, plus sick pay, will need training and will need another person at the ready to replace the school aged person while they are on leave or on holiday.
Excellent! Win win.
That is also funding work ethic, more disposable income locally and contributing to a youngsters self worth.
Far better that than more trucks, more plastic, more carbon more returns to foreign owned companies.
bwhahahahahahahah
i like your glasses, so very very rosy.
well said gsays. I've been wanting to write a post about this for a long time. At the moment I'm tending towards thinking that most New Zealanders don't actually give a shit about the climate or ecology. They say they do but when it comes down to it, most are not willing to change or act in ways that will make a difference. Covid has made this very obvious. Hard to write about the issue given that.
Hard to disagree with you weka. Lip service comes to mind.
I was feeling curmudgeonly when I wrote it. As much as a reminder that we can't have it both ways- the return of an industry that is poorly paid and relies on ignoring externalities while doing our bit facing CC.
Not wanting to tell you how to suck eggs but maybe framed in the context of our most popular PM's 'nuclear moment'?
We do need reminding.
the problem for me with centering Labour is that atm I always want to use the headling "fuck Labour" (when writing about climate, or water, or poverty, or housing…)
(but it's a good idea otherwise)
They say they do but when it comes down to it, most are not willing to change or act in ways that will make a difference.
Given a choice between climate and poverty guess which wins every time.
Is it fair to describe a far less carbon intensive lifestyle as poverty?
Sure, we may be less 'rich' but that is coming down from a very high bar.
Plus the unintended consequences of pivoting to a localised economy means the same $ are shared among more people nearer the bottom end of the scale.
Or less for shareholders and other rentiers.
Is it fair to describe a far less carbon intensive lifestyle as poverty?
It's accurate to say that a lifestyle without electricity is poverty. The question is how carbon intensive is that electricity? Two related but different things.
The point being made is that in all the developing countries – when it comes to a choice between no electricity and dirty coal generated electricity – the coal wins every time. And that's the crux of the climate change debate.
The only technical pathway forward is carbon free, reliable electricity that is cheaper than coal.
(I will add that making coal more expensive by stopping subsidies and adding a carbon price really would help a lot in the developed world – but then again you cannot blame countries like say Indonesia looking at this as a very poor deal indeed.)
well considering that global supply chains are all turning to custard due to Covid and other factors we are all gonna be buying local a lot more, I suspect.
More from the NZ arm of a recent international Lord Ashcroft Poll:
.
As Graham Adams recently asked:
.
Lord Ashcroft Poll:
Q: Best way to ensure all New Zealanders are treated fairly is to have:
1. Laws, institutions & public services that apply to everyone no matter what their background:
2. Some laws, institutions & public services dedicated to Māori and indigenous people:
……………… 1. Everyone % …….. 2. Māori-Indigenous %
All ……………….. 77 ………………….. 22
Male ………..…….. 79 ………………….. 20
Female …………….. 74 ………………….. 24
Age
18-24 ……………… 64 …………………. 34
25-34 …………..….. 71 …………………. 29
35-44 …………..….. 76 …………………. 23
45-54 ……………….. 78 …………………. 21
55-64 ……………….. 83 …………………. 16
65 + ……………….… 85 …………………. 14
Party Support
Māori …………..…… 52 …………………. 48
Green …………..….. 53 …………………. 46
Labour ……………… 74 …………………. 25
NZF ……………..…. 81 …………………. 18
National ………….…. 86 …………………. 13
ACT ……………..…. 90 …………………. 10
Ethnicity
Māori …………….… 56 …………………. 43
Mixed Māori ………… 65 …………………. 35
Pasikika …………….. 69 …………………. 29
Other Mixed …………. 74 …………………. 24
Asian …………….… 77 …………………. 22
White/Euro ……….… 79 …………………. 20
Other Ethnicity …….… 86 …………………. 13
I think the older you get the more likely you recall the phrase "full and final settlement".
The one from the 1940s? That was when I believe it was first used. For instance this "full settlement" that was arbitrarily imposed Taranaki iwi in the mid-1940s by the self-interested beneficiaries of outright land theft in the Taranaki.
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/8/11/162/pdf
Note that "the return of their ancestral lands" means getting a income in perpetuity rather then getting a gratuity that gets eroded by inflation and has final dates. For some reason that wasn’t offered for a act of theft – instead there was this arbitrarily imposed “full settlement”.
That is why if you look at the best run iwi organisations, they tend to focus on acquiring land and then leasing it as market rentals (where they aren't putting up their own housing).
There is a reason why Maori, especially the elderly, are so distrustful of "full and final settlements" imposed or extorted from them by people who are using their theft 'rights' to put them over barrel.
They are also entirely aware that the medical system that works for others seem to leave their population with distressingly low life expectancy, education systems that seem to only prepare their kids for jail, settlers who seem to like spending their time using rivers and waterway like the sewers that they left in Europe in the 19th century, etc.
They rightfully say that those systems alien to their culture are clearly not working for them – and say that they should be changed so that they do. I have a great deal of sympathy for that point of view.
I found the Kiwi education system to be a pile of crap myself – more of a daycare for working parents rather than a education system – I managed to educate myself despite its clear deficiencies with the support of my family and a huge stockpile of books from university.
Your comment implicitly rejects any possibility of the the Treaty process ever being finalised. And that's because as framed it cannot be.
In one sense the only way to resolve it finally is for everything that happened in NZ after 1840 to be erased – everything removed or destroyed if it could not be – and then given back to the iwi chiefs as found and in a form no longer ‘alien to their culture’. That would return precisely what was taken – full and final.
The problem is that the modernity and progress that the vile, thieving colonials brought with them – keeps on adding to the value of everything. Settlement one decade will always be 'paltry' the next.
I concluded back in the 80's that the process was designed by both sides to never achieve finality.
It's always been paltry the wellington settlement for $170 million plus some land was all the govt could give under the $2 billion overall cap.The land stolen and confiscated was estimated at the time to be worth $17 billion.
Yet Maori gave some of this land in the paltry settlement back as a National Park. To show how generous they are.You would not get that from those who have profited out of that stolen land.
I would say that you were just impatient and clearly didn't understand the complexity of the task.
We are talking about claims running back to 1840, and concentrated in the 1860-1890 era. My direct family tree were here for much of that period – the first of whom arrived in the early 1820s and the last in the 1880s.
I couldn't give you a genealogy running much past 1930 or a land history of property running much past the 40 years. That is despite the best efforts of some of my deceased elders who got interested in things like that in their retirement. I'm someone who is strongly interested in history – just not particularly of DNA breeding patterns or the tales of my ancestors. In this I'm pretty typical of Europeans culture outside of some self-appointed aristocracy who lean on their ancestors achievements rather than their own.
Maori have a very different culture. They still have a tradition of carrying a verbal history as a iwi, hapu or just a family clan. Sometimes, like all verbal histories that aren't taken down from the living, these are frequently blurred by time and embellishments.
That Waitangi Treaty was envisaged as a process – at least in part because was going to be bloody difficult dealing with century old claims.
The problem with finality is the sheer number of land cases where land was confiscated unlawfully or where the laws were made without a legal justification. Each of which has to be documented as evidence and then negotiated. This was always going to take decades. Just doing the historical research when virtually everyone involved in the original deeds was dead was immense.
It was also what the lazy 'full and final settlement' morons running the processes for the crown back in the 1940s neglected to do at all. So there wasn't even a record from that, let alone from when the expropriations were made. Quite simply the crown didn't hold sufficient records to refute claims and they had to work like crazy digging back into the remaining records to verify or refute claims.
Maori were never going to get all of their land back – their only prospect of that was to claim back land that the state had grabbed from them and still held, or compensatory assets (typically of less value). The money paid out was generally targeted by iwi towards buying other revenue generating assets.
A key part of the negotiation was putting place forward agreements so that when certain types of crown held property became available that iwi often got first refusal and an acceptable purchase process. That process is ongoing.
But as far as I am aware each land settlement that has been achieved has been final, subject to any outstanding claims outside of the agreement. And once the appeals from competing hapu and competing iwi were dealt with.
You could also ask for the dead killed by European diseases to arise from the grave too along with the families that they never had. However none of those things were in the Waitangi Tribunal enabling legislation.
The land claims are slowly coming to an end because new claims were closed off in 2008 and while the remaining historical claims (before September 1992) are large – they are few.
There are a number of non-assets claims still proceeding related to the principles in the Treaty. The most important of those (in my view) have to do with despoliation of water. Something that I have a great deal of sympathy about because the crown has traditionally screwed this up really badly. We will be spending another century cleaning them up because we have to (and that is the earth sciences and history student in me talking).
But the other major problem that remains is the 180 years odd violations of the treaty provisions social effects on the Maori population. I usually boil this down to one set of statistics – the percentage of Maori in prisons is obscene and clearly points to the failure of kiwi society and the crown at all levels.
As at 2018 about 1 in 142 Maori males will spend time in prison in their lifetime compared to 1 in 880 kiwis of euro ancestry. Our male prisons usually hold about 50% or more Maori population at any one time, and about 68% in female prisons.
Maori are about 15% of our total population. Those prison figure haven't budged much in my lifetime. And they probably won't until Maori feel more comfortable in our common society.
That is just dead weight on our common society. Clearly the opportunities must be limited to force so many down that unproductive path (even if there wasn't the filtering effect of the justice system – see this Stuff interactive)
In the tech areas that I have been working in for the last 30 years, I can't recall ever working with any Maori colleagues at all – despite most of those organisations having some pretty diverse hires from both local born and immigration. Somehow I don't think that having 15% of our population effectively excluded from some of the highest paying professional jobs is a good sign.
The only place that I have ever seen over the last 45 years in my jobs where Maori employment at comparable or better levels was when I was in in the army.
The regular force enlisted were close to 50% of their intake. The TF intake I was was ridiculously European for a kid coming from Mt Albert Grammar with its diversity of population back in 1977. That spoke to me as being a systematic poverty problem. I suspect that it might be a bit better today
Until those kinds of inequities subside to an acceptable, the Waitangi Tribunal needs to continue their work – because it is clear that the promises in any version of our founding treaty haven't been fulfilled.
Plus having a disaffected population who doesn't trust the crown or the state and isn't able to work to their capabilities through lack of opportunities is just unproductive. You only have to look at the Maori vaccination rates to see consequences of that.
I read that and find myself nodding at most points. You touch on two main themes – the ToW process itself and the obvious alienation of many – but certainly not all – Maori.
Stepping back I'd argue that we've both made the case, from differing directions, that the idea of the ToW process bringing any kind of finality to the table was always wrong. Both parties were always going to be disappointed because the land itself – important as it is in some ways – was never really the issue.
The real issue is one that has repeated itself uncountable times over millennia – what happens when one society that has progressed to a wider stage of evolution encounters one that has not. Essentially Maori – like so many similar peoples elsewhere – were a tribal society that were never going to remain unchanged when modernity arrived.
This doesn't mean that tribal societies have no value, nor lack their own sophistication and history. It says nothing about the stature and mana of the people who lived in that world. But ultimately their tribal social technology had no answer to the nation state the Europeans brought with them.
This is the very stuff of history – peoples who had adopted broader based social structures and wider moral horizons, displacing those who had yet to. Absent this process we would still be hunter-gatherers, numbering no more than a few 10's of millions across the whole planet. Neither of us would be here to type out this conversation.
Your second theme on the alienation of some Maori within the wider NZ society is too complex to deal with concisely. I'll confine myself to noting that while the left has been spitting out phrases like 'structural racism' and 'white supremacy' for quite some time now – there is no evidence that any of this effort has reduced the Maori head count in our prisons by so much as one.
Sure – but that is more of an indictment of the tendency for the hand-wringers of the left to talk without doing anything productive when they don't feel the problem personally. They love talking about problems but recoil from looking for solutions. And they too bloody impatient looking for results. Social changes take many decades, and usually many generations.
BTW: The conservatives have the opposite problem – they're always looking to stop talking and do stupid actions. Short-term actions that don't solve problems and tend to create even larger ones. Look at any policy driven by Judith Collins in her ministerial career for the definitive exemplars.
But the problem you're talking about is exactly what the Maori activists that I took time to go and listen to back in the 80s and 90s said would happen. Attempts to do things the European way using crown entities on a Maori population that didn't trust those processes was doomed to fail.
They have never worked in the past – but fools in politics, ministerial policies, and their departments keep trying to repeat the same failed approaches over and over again. I went back into the history and that is exactly what happened 150 years.
The argument of the activists was that only way to lift Maori out of the vast hole that those failed policies had created was to get Maori to designed the policies and ideally to largely handle them (there are obvious issues with skill shortages).
The only system that even looked like that was the attempt to rescue the Maori language from its impending oblivion. Started without state support in 1985, gained that in 1990. It has now been spreading up the education chain as you can see from the latest stats.
As a person who knows roughly 90 computer languages, I really miss not having had the chance to learn Maori myself. I have absolutely no ear for Maori, and I find I keep needing it more and more as Maori spreads into daily life – especially in the names of government organisations. They all 'sound' the same to me. I have never used the spoken and written Latin, French, and German that I did to varying degrees at school.
Outside of a few Iwi organisations starting in the later 90s, there weren't any other attempts to follow this singular and as far as I can tell only mature successful strategy example of Maori-led solutions for Maori until the 21st century. These were few even then and now.
So I'd say – don't be so frigging impatient. These are generational changes not ones that turn on a historical dime.
But at least as a society we're slowly getting out of the habit of trying to tailor generic solutions for problems that are specific to Maori and other groups.
I tend to focus on Maori because of the usual Pareto analysis way of solving systematic issues. Identify the biggest problem first (ie like prison populations) and figure out based on the previous failed solutions and odd successful one on what to try next until you find things that keep working – then expand from that.
Right now the only visible effect is the slow rise of a Maori middle income group, in a large part mostly working on Maori issues or organisations. That works for me – it was what I argued was the only useful path back in the 1980s and 1990s when the Waitangi Tribunal process started making decisions that eventually started to capitalise Iwi corporations. That Maori working for Maori was the only historically viable process.
Yes and no. We don't exactly have a human monoculture world wide despite our massively generic similarity compared to any other species apart from cheetahs. I'd argue that historically you can identify the successful cultures by their very lack of a monoculture. They are the bastard mixes of cultures that learn to accommodate differences.
In NZ, I really noticed this when I left the Ponsonby and Mt Albert environs of the 1970s and went working around the rest of the North and South island cities and towns in the 1980s. They felt class ridden and stagnant to me. Plus the food was terrible.
I'm short on time to do justice to this conversation but again – mostly in agreement. The nitpick that leapt out at me was this:
. I'd argue that historically you can identify the successful cultures by their very lack of a monoculture.
Tell that to much of Asia – but still I take the point. However what I had in mind was not so much 'culture' in the sense you are using it here, but 'social technology' in the sense of the staged progression from the small clan based nomadic hunter-gather, the territorial tribalists, the regional based city based empire, the rise of the civilisational empire and toward the modern nation state. The most important distinction at each stage is the scope of their 'moral horizon' – how many people are on the inside vs the outside.
This concept is really not the same as culture or ethnicity at all. And while the transition from one stage to the other is always turbulent, in the long run the society that has adopted the broader based social horizon dominates.
Particularly galling is the compensation paid to the farmers for losing their free land was more than that paid to the owners whose land it was. They also extended the leases further.
Apparently Maori don't get the same property rights / compensation that white settlers do. Same as the compensation paid to slave owners for losing their slaves really!
https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/Documents/WT/wt_DOC_68188083/Taranaki%20Maori%20Dairy%20Industry%20Changes%20etc.pdf
It's really a tool for hopeless debtors to avoid bankruptcy, it would never be a credible option for a government that is not utterly desperate.
Sadly, no edit function … so can't tidy up table [no matter how neat & careful you are … it never ends up that way once posted ]
@swordfish:
1. turn off javascript to get the plain comment box
2. use the <pre> tag to print fixed width text
3. construct your table like so.. (dunno if the html table tags are supported.. could test it out later)
Cheers
It's always been paltry the wellington settlement for $170 million plus some land was all the govt could give under the $2 billion overall cap.The land stolen and confiscated was estimated at the time to be worth $17 billion.
Yet Maori gave some of this land in the paltry settlement back as a National Park. To show how generous they are.You would not get that from those who have profited out of that stolen land.
ffs clipped the box again
https://www.kamloopsbcnow.com/watercooler/news/news/Provincial/Vancouver_is_now_completely_cut_off_to_the_rest_of_Canada_by_road/
ouch.
Great news. Police have announced they have discovered 2 bodies in the Pike River mine.
Using boreholes and modern detection equipment, they have very clear images of the remains of two of the men.
Too soon for police to say if prosecutions will follow as the investigation is on-going.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/127014143/live-police-to-announce-remains-of-men-killed-in-pike-river-mine-disaster-found
https://twitter.com/henrycooke/status/1460761561983700994
yaaaaay slow clap
this extended lockdown is beyond a joke now.
wait, you want the lockdown to end early? Isn't that against the collective good? Genuinely curious how you square this with the state using force on other ways.
lockdown is a temporary emergency measure and doesn't solve shit. it's not really working for Auckland is it?
Also, it's a huge impingement on people's basic freedoms. It's fucking me up
Rejoice!
Freedom Day!
Rejoice!
you realise it's the reverse for the South Island.
Sorry, i was sarcastic. You realise that i am not happy about this at all and personally believe that we should stay in lockdown?
But its gonna be Freedom Day, it must be Freedom Day, insert what ever reason makes most sense.
sorry, didn't mean to put that tweet under your Pike River comment.
Andrew Little will not be amused. Did he get the entrance blocked up before this happened?
Read the linked article.
Yes, it does tell you doesn't it. I stopped looking at the whole affair about the time the families were trying to get an injunction to stop him getting it sealed.
Oh well, I suppose they will be demanding that full sized tunnels now be drilled instead of the tiny things that take a camera.
So this isn't the first time someone has used their health credentials and then argued that they shouldn't be held responsible because they were doing so "in a personal capacity". a recently-departed Southern DHB board member did something similar.
Makes me wonder whether "personal capacity" is doing the rounds as an "absolve responsibility free" card, like "I don't recognise your authority" and "sovereign citizen". Seems to have about the same success rate.
Of course I had to look. Barking. Just short of it's the Joos but "Immortal" Hydra Vulgaris got a mention in the comments.
Yep, I expect the same.
The government (in the "person" of OSH) should teally ibe the first in the dock over the Pike River deaths
Big day. Need to crash. Nite all
Bugger that was supposed to be a reply to alwayn at 6.3.1.1.1
IPad 2 ‘s playing up.
Its a subtle twist on the many hats defence popularised by a recent P.M.
A sign of things to come? "We care for people on both end of the leach"
https://youtu.be/cdkvvafeMzk