Took some time to savour the right wing web sites last night. By Jupiter, they’ve become completely unhinged since the Labour led coalition took power. Farrar has gone completely troppo, posting bitter diatribes and editorially is apparently taking on Breitbart, complete with stories about how ruggedly individualistic flying cars are going to save us from socialist trains.
The old school ACToids have always been viciously barking mad, but under Key and National they were able to keep their Galtian predilictions for a ruthless social Darwinism run by authoritarian nihilists under wraps. Now it is completely out of the bag, the rantings from the like of Rodders and Hoskings are awesome fun to read.
But most importantly, I have been struck by how old they all sound, how jarringly yesterday their message is. Jacinda has already achieved one thing – she has smashed the long, paralysing lee the 1980s-90 ideologues have exercised on our society. In a strange way, it is like the country went into the election becalmed in 1996, and suddenly woke up in 2017.
To be large extent this is just generational change. Baby boomers are moving over and becoming less of the force they once were. GenX (of which I am one) are moving to the top of the “escalator”. And they don’t necessarily share the same social values as the baby boomers. Certainly they are more socially liberal.
Lots of generalisations there, so please don’t take offense, but I think the characterisation is reasonable.
The problem is that most baby boomers were socially liberal and caring in their early twenties. Many still are. It is the change when they hit the workforce, make decent money and equate it with knowing everything.
And with it they are revealling themselves to be many of the things they revile in others.
I just read a piece from Finlay McDonald written late October. I missed it at the time but it is a good summary of the self entitlement and chilish tantrums we are seeing now.
cheers Tracey-i was travelling and missed that article-nicely summed up by Finlay. National operating in their own parallel universe. Boy are they going to have difficulty renewing.
Thanks Tracey (1.2) … Finlay McDonald is extremely intelligent, a fine astute writer, very much on the ball. And with this one he’s absolutely right, given what’s evolving on the Opposition benches at present.
Proving Natz is so last century, maybe going beyond that even. Their petulant behaviour is quite consistent with the spiteful, spoilt brats they are. Definitely not constructive towards building a progressive NZ!
The loss of the tories is like a fascinating psychological experiment, they aren’t handling the jandal, trying not to be smug but from the side lines it’s so satisfying to watch.
Meanwhile Jacinda ‘burns’ trump, another proud moment for NZ, I love her style.
“I said, ‘You know’, laughing, ‘no-one marched when I was elected’.”
Jacinda is transformed into the Princess and NZ the sleeping beauty. We awake and rub our eyes, and find the world full of promise. Promises that we must ensure are met with adequate action.
That action will turn act into the tiny thing it is in reality after the bluster and false authority of academic degrees fired into the world to do harm like intercontinental missiles. Let’s have some kiwi thinking and doing which takes in world information and then is decided by us as well informed, pragmatic people with a humanist and sustainable vision. All this from one kiss.
Thanks Jacinda and the Labour people who supported her. Make these changes – don’t rest just because you have Labour on the Benches again. We have to face the future and its grim. We can only survive it with spirit intact, working, talking, co-operating with practical, kind people. Don’t look over to National. It will probably take another generation before they can tear themselves away from their arrogance and confabulations.
Yep the youthquake has actually happened it is just not often visible – lorde and Jacinda showed it last night. I too have been so heartened by the generational change. Many elders are struggling with this and not all are righties. I love it and I love passing the baton to those who are going to be here making it happen. Thank you Jacinda and labour and the greens and nzf. Thank you for giving hope for a better future.
Better to the left than the right or god forbid neo libs. Only time will tell whether the same mistakes are made. Not learning from the past, not looking at the everlasting principle of balance .
Balance is interesting – is it equilibrium or a settled oscillation or an eventual tendency to always keep moving towards entropy. Politically for me it is being hard left and being okay that others think differently. ☺
Colliers national director research and consulting, Alan McMahon says
He said wages had not risen in line with house prices and not everyone could afford a million-dollar property, so many would be looking to the cheaper suburbs.
Part of my soul belongs as a Green Party member, as my family came home to NZ in 1998 after 11yrs in Canada & USA and NZ was on the verge of voting in a new Labour ‘lead’ Government, and my familly joined the ‘alliance/green membership ‘mob’ as they were at that crazy time a very credible lot and had some high profile members in both ‘fledgling’ parties.
The alliance people sadly had dropped away since then, but we still have an alliance with some HB members today.
The greens have now ’emerged as another style of Political Party than they were when we joined them in 1999, and like most others we are all still confused about their whole strategy today.
That having said, I have always agreed with the ‘core’ environmental’ planks and always will but I do seriously miss Jeanettee Fitszimmons and the late Rod Donald whom we all met several times in Napier and today as said we are very distanced from today’s “new green party” members.
Our heart will always be ‘green’ because they are seriously needed here, especially during the current “global rot” setting in with the savengers who are stealing everything from all countries for profit.
With assets like water, oil, and many other commodities that are being extracted at such a blind rate that our future is a peril as is the climate that we all depend upon.
James Shaw we do like now as he seems to be a very level headed individual.
We hope he takes control of the green party core members and puts out a statement that all is progressing between labour and the green party over this “hickup” and the so called “horse trading” claims over “waka jumping” is just not a big issue as stated but constructive discussion was always on the table over what to do about the side issue that has emerged.
Jeanette Fitsimmons re emerged publocly when Turei was being pilloried. To say she is not supportive of the social justice aspect of Green policy requires more evifence than this cleangreen. If that is what you are alluding to.
Disagreement is healthy. Within and between parties. That Nats seem to have so few internal disagreement suggests either a village of the dammed type caucus or self interest is so embedded they sit on their hands in return for the power and position.
The Greens are outside Cabinet. That means they can differ from the Government on issues. Until we all mature in this respect we cannot expect politicians to.
Hi Tracey,
“To say she (jeanette) is not supportive of the social justice”
NoNoNo, tracey, we do not ‘infer’ Jeanette is not supportive of social justice at all, you missed our point.
Jeanette is a very warm caring person, she came to napier to meet us over the truck gridlock issue on Napier roads back in 2001 and walked along the Pirimai suburb with our committee to inspect the amount of noisy trucks rattling down the HB Expressway past the closeby houses that are threatening our residents health and wellbeing.
Jeanette wrote a column in the HB Today after saying it was the worst designed dangerous residential highway through a city she had even seen.
This was a significant win for our residents then and jeanette will always be admired for her support of our call for social justice for our community deeply still today affected by the truck gridlock we have worse now since national destroyed our rail services in 2012.
That Herald item above was just building something out of nothing, comparatively. Every decision or thought that the Greens make will be put under a microscope.
And I couldn’t find an author’s name on it. Just basically scrapings.
Reading that article, it strikes me that the problem is not the Greens appallingly bad use of email – or non-actions – since there is no statement from them included.
It is the swiftness of denigrating replies from Andrew Little, Winston Peters, and Shane Jones.
How hard is it to say – “Well, that must be part of an internal discussion because they have not made an approach to the coalition/our party yet. We’ll wait until they do before passing a comment”?
There appears to be no self-discipline being shown here.
I do struggle to think someone cannot send an email to the correct place. It doesn’t take much to check it and it’s not exactly new technology and there are plenty of examples where people have got it wrong with major publicity.
The problem is with email lists that are not obvious until pulled down. There may be numbers of people on them. Better to have individual receipients rather than mass postings.
Green party are today in the middle of a “minor” scrap over “waka jumping” .
I don’t think so. I think it’s much more likely that the Herald are shit stirring. I wrote this in DR last night.
Hmm, let’s tease this out a bit.
It’s not a leak, apparently the email got sent to the media by mistake.
The Herald cherry picked a bit of the email,
The Green Party’s justice spokeswoman Golriz Ghahraman, in an internal email accidentally sent to Fairfax, floated the idea of trying to garner support for a National Parihaka Day – the subject of a Green private member’s bill.
That’s The Herald’s interpretation.
Here’s the actual words,
“The Government won’t have the numbers to pass the [waka-jumping] legislation without us, and if we decided to oppose it then they would need to consider other options such as approaching the National Party, who opposed the 2005 bill,” the email says.
“Opposing the bill would cause political tensions, given the inclusion of the bill in the Labour-NZ First coalition agreement.
“Our Confidence and Supply Agreement gives us the independence to choose to vote against it. Supporting the bill would be seen as changing and weakening a long-standing and public party position. It would risk criticism from our core supporters.”
To me that looks like the Greens working through a dilemma and in one email one MP has laid out some of the issues.
During the parallel coalition negotiations, Green’s co-leader James Shaw put his faith in Jacinda Ardern to ensure that there was nothing in the Labour-NZF deal that the Greens would object to – though he conceded there might be policies that he might not be comfortable with.
No shit. Part of the value of the set up is that the Greens are free to vote how they want on things not covered in their agreement with Labour. This is how MMP works as designed.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters poured scorn on horse-trading tactics.
“We don’t horse trade.
This is interesting. Because I would have thought that negotiating around support for legislation is exactly what was intended by the deals that allowed Labour to form government.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said doing a deal with the Greens over waka-jumping had not come up “in direct conversation”.
She said she has not given much thought to a National Parihaka Day.
“I certainly am pleased to see greater observance of those days of New Zealand’s history. I think we should encourage that. Whether or not it becomes a day off is an entirely different issue.”
So not a big deal for Labour. Little called it horse-trading but other than that where are the ripples of discontent from Labour?
A spokesperson for the Green Party said the email was an “internal document that was sent in error”.
“It’s not surprising that Labour Party and Green Party MPs are having these kinds of constructive conversations and working together; in fact, that’s what New Zealanders expect of government parties.
“It’s commonplace for ministers and MPs to have these kind of conversations – that will continue,” the spokesperson said.
That’s what I would expect.
I don’t know what happened. But it does look like the Herald is shit stirring (and yes, no name to the article).
Yeah. Looks exactly like what I would expect a support partner to a coalition to looking at.
I guess the anonymous fool at the Herald is just another political illiterate. Don’t they publish that similar idiotic cheap from Howling Mike Hosking as well?
That Herald article doesn’t feel right. I can’t see any of the quoted people talking to the Herald like that. They all know what the Herald is, I’d expect them to be far more circumspect and guarded in their replies.
Very concerning that the Greens would consider opposing the ‘waka jumping’ bill.
Even worse wanting something so tokenistic as some sort of weird leverage. That thinking (tokenistic) is what has caused Greens to plummet to 6% . It started with red peak taking attention from more important issues.
A holiday or name change might be symbolic to those on a $200k salary but to voter’s they get pretty disillusioned when the party the vote for’s individuals get bribed or are just so stupid they jump ship and derail the democratic process and the Greens are prepared to oppose legislation to stop that.
For MMP to work, voters need to know if they vote for a minor party they will not jump ship to support another for their own personal gain.
Greens should be unconditionally supporting the Waka jumping legislation.
Whether they want to put National Parihaka Day through should be independent of very important legislation to keep integrity in the democratic process.
And also the reason it’s necessary is that the National party have a history of derailing democracy by using it to pick off weak minded MP’s.
Why would the Greens support helping National pick off weak minded MP’s by allowing this waka jumping loophole to remain?
What is wrong with an electorate mp jumping ship? and should backbenchers not be allowed to hold party leaders to account.
This law will make representative democracy even less representative. That the greens would trade away the democratic nature of party positions for a national holiday is strange. I thought they had more principles than that
Have you actually seen the proposed bill?
I certainly haven’t seen any wording and the only thing I have seen said merely that Little was considering it.
Can you provide a link to the bill as it will be put before the house?
As a side note I suspect there would not be a Green Party in Parliament if such a bill had existed in 1997.
The Green Party leaders at the time were in Parliament as part of the Alliance. If they had announced, as they did, that they were going to stand independently in 1999 I suspect that Jim Anderton would have demanded that they be expelled from Parliament, and that they would have been replaced by people he thought would remain loyal to him.
If so I don’t think that the Green Party would have remained in Parliament in 1999. As it was, even with all the publicity and travel subsidies available to sitting MPs they only just scraped back in on their own. Both Fitzsimmons winning Coromandel and the party getting over 5% only happened when the specials came in and got them over the line in both cases.
If they hadn’t survived then I think they would have been gone for good. The record of parties getting in without already holding seats is not great is it?
So you haven’t read the bill, but you suspect that it would have destroyed the greens in the 1990s? Why do you suspect that the waka-jumping bill will apply to people who announce they will run for another party in the future, without actually leaving or withdrawing support from their current party until the campaign?
Given that it didn’t stop Anderton doing exactly that in 2002.
What I did see about a proposed bill was that Winston wanted to be able to expel people from a party and that they would then be kicked out of the Parliament.
It wasn’t, from what I heard about it, intended to be limited to people who actually left the party of their own accord. It appeared to be intended it to be anyone a party leader was pissed off about.
“One of the more surprising matters included in the Labour/NZ First coalition agreement is their joint commitment to pass a ‘Waka Jumping’ Bill”. Such legislation effectively requires any MP who leaves her or his party, whether willingly or not, to also leave Parliament”.
:” But note that this approach puts an awful lot of power into the hands of a party leader (assuming that she or he still has the backing of her or his party). ”
The source OAB referred me to doesn’t have the final detail which appears to still be under consideration. Geddis however didn’t seem to think it was intended to be limited to List MPs only.
As for Jim Anderton. He and the rest of the party ended up pretending they were all still part of one party, even though they were setting up opposition groups.
As Geddis also said in my link
“Because neither grouping wanted to leave Parliament, they were forced to pretend they remained one united party even as Jim Anderton set about creating his own new one outside of it”.
Of course I wouldn’t care, NOW, whether the “Green” party vanished. I would have been disappointed in 1999 though when they seemed to be a predominately environmental group rather than left wing party with only a peripheral interest in the environment. That is, at least to me, what they now seem to be.
What I did see about a proposed bill was that Winston wanted to be able to expel people from a party and that they would then be kicked out of the Parliament.
In that case Professor Geddis would be wrong wouldn’t he?
However what is to say that the Party Constitution would continue to apply if NZF get their bill passed? They are very to amend after all.
And who is going to hold that the Party Constitution would, or could, override the law of the land? If there was a conflict between what the Constitution said and what the law said the law is always going to win.
The NZF party used to have, I understand, a clause that any MP who left the Party agreed to resign from Parliament and pay the party $300,000 while about it.
It is mentioned here http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/243707/nz-first-radically-changes-its-rules
According to Professor Geddis, quoted in this link, such a clause would be tossed out by a court if they tried to enforce it. That would seem to be the reason they want a law to do it for them.
And you also confuse Winston committing an act beyond his powers in the party constitution (as you put it “Winston wanted to be able to expel people from a party and that they would then be kicked out of the Parliament”, when he does not even have this power under the party constitution) and there being a conflict between the party constitution and the law.
So again, your concern for the job security of the poor NZ1 MPs whom you believe serve at the whim of a petulant and capricious Winston Peters shows that you fundamentally misunderstand both the situation and how democratic parties operate.
Just sounds like an internal conversation that accidentally got released to the MSM and now the MSM are attacking like the good little National Party attack dogs they are.
I doubt if was going any further and probably wouldn’t have been policy but ideas do need to be discussed before hand whether they’re used or not.
Australia opens door to New Zealand taking Manus Island refugees
The Australian Government has acknowledged that New Zealand could deal direct with Papua New Guinea over taking some of the Manus Island refugees – and Australia could not block such a deal.
Australia’s Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has opened the door to a possible resettlement deal between the two sovereign states – but he indicated Australia would not be pleased.
I think that the headline and the Herald interpretation in para 2 are different to the real story as expressed by the Australian Minister.
All he really said was that New Zealand, as a Sovereign Country, can do whatever they like. He then said that if they do they had better think very hard about it as Australia wasn’t going to like it at all.
His statement was not a great deal different to saying that North Korea can test nuclear weapons if they wish to. What could Australia, or anyone else except China actually do to stop them? However don’t expect Australia to allow trade with North Korea if they continue to do so.
He was just about as undiplomatic about it as you can be. I was over there recently and there were definite signs that Australia was going to make things even harder for New Zealanders over there than they are already. Expect having to get a specific visa before you go will be the next step if we let the Manus Islanders into New Zealand I fear.
Gal Gadot, heroine of Wonder Woman, has announced that the main producer (financial backer) of the previous Wonder Woman will not take part in Wonder Woman II.
This is after well-publicised accusations against Ratner of serious sexual impropriety.
Now, if anyone can remember when a producer was removed from a blockbuster Hollywood franchise for sexual impropriety because the lead acress demanded it, could you all please let me know.
And this is getting cut out of a machine that was about to start printing hundreds of millions more dollars in profit, based on the track record of the last one.
Money, finally, did not talk.
As it stands, this looks like Wonder Woman just hit real life., very hard, and caused an earhtquake.
Gal Gadot …Israeli settler Zionist who tweeted her support of the IDF in 2014 while they were according the UN enquiry were killing 1462 civilians (at least) including 495 children methinks wonder woman has mud on her cape.
The ethnic cleansing ,atrocities , denial of human rights et cetera over a 69 year period doesn’t this make Israel some sort of record holder? Shouldn’t those who support this be held to account or is it ok because of her “feminist” victory? Or is it that so many Hollywood figures are Zionist?
Does that make it ok?
Well the Palestinians have got great reason to hate Nazism after all it was the western worlds guilt at the Holocaust which led to the formation of Israel and thus the Palestinian slow motion Holocaust – still ongoing after 69 years.
The Nazis hold all the records for industrialised murder and disenfranchisement of a people.
The Zionists hold the record (in living memory ) for the disenfranchisement and destruction of a people – in the length of its campaign – 69 years and counting.
Burgess, who was working as a temp at Fox at the time, said it only took O’Reilly about two weeks to start harassing her.
“He always walked past my desk and he made, like, a grunting noise,” Burgess said. “As time went on, I noticed … if no one was around, he would make that noise.”
Chinese speculators are having one last shot at the cherry.
Stop them act now, cut out their cancer.
We owe them nothing, they owe us our houses.
You have the mandate and the capability, strike a meaningful blow and send a message don’t wait until Xmas, do it next week.
Every one sold is one we have to build.
[Letting this racist shit through, only because it’s a fairly stark example of the type of racist and xenophobic rhetoric some (too many) in this country seem to be fairly comfortable with.] – Bill
Isn’t that both Labour and Green policy to stop overseas sales of residential property??
It’s the Natz that wants NZ to be a one world monopoly board.
Personally think they need to include all Land including farms and commercial property. Just let foreigners buy the rights on leases. (Take a note from China, no land owed by foreign interests, any business interests have to partner with Chinese firms etc)
Seriously, Bill, I think you’re being over dramatic there. tv1980 specifically said Chinese speculators, not simply Chinese. Despite the questionable data begrudgingly collected by the last government, cheap Chinese capital has made Auckland unliveable for many families.
It’s been a serious problem for some time along with the same behaviour from Australian speculators. To sit there in a foreign country, as a foreign citizen, shopping online for Kiwi houses like you’re on eBay is not acceptable when such a major issue has developed.
But is it irrelevant in this case? Chinese off-shore investors are a unique case both here and in Canada I’ve heard.
China is not a fully democratised country. Corruption is high. Unreliable export products. Weak labour laws. Unsustainable growth.
All this combined into a lot of cheap money and a lot of cowboys entering the NZ domestic property market through websites dedicated to selling Kiwi houses on the internet and through the relationships with new immigrants who acted as proxy buyers.
So desperate was the last government to maintain growth figures at any cost they encouraged this form of foreign investment whether by direct off-shore marketing or by proxy purchasing.
Now, foreign investment has its place but not in the domestic housing market at a time when young families are being shunted from pillar to post because of house-flipping in an over heated market.
Now, foreign investment has its place but not in the domestic housing market at a time when young families are being shunted from pillar to post because of house-flipping in an over heated market.
A problem which is entirely independent of ethnicity.
China is not a fully democratised country. Corruption is high. Unreliable export products. Weak labour laws. Unsustainable growth.
A separate set of problems, some of which are of concern in terms of foreign policy and maintaining local freedoms.
The problem for people that want to talk about speculators from specific countries is that NZ is generally pretty racist towards people from some places and not others. Each time we have this conversation we have people saying shit that harms specific ethnicities. If we want to have the conversation then we need to take more care of that side of things. That’s the problem here, the lack of care for Chinese people, especially those that live here including people whose families have been here as long as any Pākehā ones.
So if you want to talk about Chinese speculators, my suggestion is actively push back against the racism, and talk more about the problems of speculators from places we’re not as racist about. At least then there is an indication of trying to not buy into or allow racist narratives.
The house buying ploy by many overseas financiers was little different to being a place to park ill-gotten gains, as in trusts and Panama Papers. Only in this case they were buying our shelter from under our feet, in the likely expectation they would not be closely scrutinised and make good capital gains. Pity about the stability of the NZhousing prices.
Australian speculators have also been an issue, anecdotal stories have been around of wealthy housewives flying in groups to New Zealand for the weekend and buying 5 properties each.
As has been made clear by just about everyone, Australians are untouchable for whatever reason. But this doesn’t mean the effect by off-shore Chinese speculators be ignored because it might offend someone. They are added fuel to the fire.
I know about the aussie real estate trips. Anyone who speaks so vehemently about chinese speculators above and doesnt know ozzies are a problem too need expect that their ignorance may be named racism
Putting aside the grammatical foot in mouth aspect of that, what I took tv1980 to be saying at the time is that Chinese are a cancer that need to be stopped and cut out.
I took the cancer as being speculation, but either way it’s still either directly or indirectly racist. Tbh, I saw it in the moderation queue and left it there for someone else to deal with 😉
TV1980 -Wasn’t there a report recently that it is mostly Kiwi investors who are the culprit? Easy money (perceived) no work, sounds about right- yes?
Most foreign nationals settling here feel the owe something in return to the country and will not be inclined to sh.. in the new nest. See it for what it is please.
mosa
That was interesting link:
IIRC Britain spends 49 billion pounds on paying its interest each year, which exceeds its Defence and Housing Budgets. Now is that good financial management? I’m on the edge of not having any credit on my card. That isn’t good on my part. But all those clever bastards at the top of the heap? Does it inspire confidence in our leaders there or their followers here that they are in so deep?
What happened to the good advice that you should pay within a month all that you borrowed to keep the interest down? And to be aware that any cash borrowed becomes an immediate interest bearing debt.
(CNN – )A total of 210,000 gallons of oil leaked Thursday from the Keystone Pipeline in Marshall County, South Dakota, the pipeline’s operator, TransCanada, said.
Crews shut down the pipeline Thursday morning and officials are investigating the cause of the leak.
This is the largest Keystone oil spill to date in South Dakota, said Brian Walsh, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
In April 2016, there was a 400-barrel release — or 16,800 gallons — with the majority of the oil cleanup completed in two months, Walsh said.
About 5,000 barrels of oil spilled Thursday.
You have to wonder if those present all laughed when Judith Collins, of all people, started pontificating about tact and diplomacy. I particularly loved this bit:
She said Ms Ardern needed to “learn from Winston Peters that you actually do have to be a little bit more statesman-like when you’re overseas and representing New Zealand”.
What? I thought representing NZ overseas meant bringing your husband along on overseas trips so you can use your position to help his business? This is just confusing…
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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 ...
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 28, 2024 thru Sat, May 4, 2024. Story of the week "It’s straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. In fact, research by John Cook and his colleagues ...
Yesterday I received come lovely feedback following my Star Wars themed newsletter. A few people mentioned they’d enjoyed reading the personal part at the beginning.I often begin newsletters with some memories, or general thoughts, before commencing the main topic. This hopefully sets the mood and provides some context in which ...
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?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 ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
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. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
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 ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Stories from the tenancy trenches, featuring spider infestations, cupboard rats and same-sex discrimination. Lucy’s brother was living in a damp 1930s building in Mt Eden where “he had to tie the cupboard doors closed so the rats didn’t get in”. Although he shared custody of his six-year-old son, his property ...
Simeon Brown, Chris Luxon, and Wayne Brown climbed into a hole and announced a plan to solve Auckland’s water woes. This is how it’ll work. New Zealand’s pipes are munted. They’re cracked and leaking, and struggling to handle all the extra poos excreted by our rising population. It’s a big, ...
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Opinion: ‘Reference-class forecasting’ is at the heart of improving pricing a project and identifying the expected timeframe but it doesn’t appear to be in use here The post ‘Think fast and act slowly’ is failing big projects appeared first on Newsroom. ...
What do a sombrero in Argentina and cognitive driving tests have in common? Don’t worry, we’re not setting up a bad joke. Hinengaro Clinic dementia clinician Gregory Winkelman has the answer on today’s episode of The Detail. “We ask a patient’s spouse or son or daughter: If you went to ...
Wellington long jumper Phoebe Edwards is back and she’s having fun again. Until this year, Edwards, a top athlete in her teens, had never competed as a senior athlete in New Zealand. In March, the 26-year-old won a national long jump title in a lifetime best of 6.28m after ...
After replacing a fifth of their caucus in just four months, the Greens’ opportunity to reset, reshuffle and refocus on the Government is quickly slipping away The post Persistent Green Party scandals delay caucus reset appeared first on Newsroom. ...
I knew Taika Waititi quite well when he was a kid. His mother lived in a tall narrow house in Aro St, and my youngest sister had a similar house two doors along. They were both single mums, they each had a son aged seven. Taika and my nephew Stepan ...
Opinion: “As time passes, knowledge of the circumstances of the August 2016 outbreak will fade and its immediate impact will be lost.” This statement is from the 2017 report of the Official Inquiry into the Havelock North campylobacteriosis outbreak. The then National-led government established the inquiry after the outbreak left ...
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Took some time to savour the right wing web sites last night. By Jupiter, they’ve become completely unhinged since the Labour led coalition took power. Farrar has gone completely troppo, posting bitter diatribes and editorially is apparently taking on Breitbart, complete with stories about how ruggedly individualistic flying cars are going to save us from socialist trains.
The old school ACToids have always been viciously barking mad, but under Key and National they were able to keep their Galtian predilictions for a ruthless social Darwinism run by authoritarian nihilists under wraps. Now it is completely out of the bag, the rantings from the like of Rodders and Hoskings are awesome fun to read.
But most importantly, I have been struck by how old they all sound, how jarringly yesterday their message is. Jacinda has already achieved one thing – she has smashed the long, paralysing lee the 1980s-90 ideologues have exercised on our society. In a strange way, it is like the country went into the election becalmed in 1996, and suddenly woke up in 2017.
To be large extent this is just generational change. Baby boomers are moving over and becoming less of the force they once were. GenX (of which I am one) are moving to the top of the “escalator”. And they don’t necessarily share the same social values as the baby boomers. Certainly they are more socially liberal.
Lots of generalisations there, so please don’t take offense, but I think the characterisation is reasonable.
The problem is that most baby boomers were socially liberal and caring in their early twenties. Many still are. It is the change when they hit the workforce, make decent money and equate it with knowing everything.
Exactly
The 1960s and 1970s were a social revolution when the baby boomers liberalised society like no other generation ever has.
And with it they are revealling themselves to be many of the things they revile in others.
I just read a piece from Finlay McDonald written late October. I missed it at the time but it is a good summary of the self entitlement and chilish tantrums we are seeing now.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/on-the-inside/342593/national-s-first-100-days-in-opposition-worth-watching
cheers Tracey-i was travelling and missed that article-nicely summed up by Finlay. National operating in their own parallel universe. Boy are they going to have difficulty renewing.
Thanks Tracey (1.2) … Finlay McDonald is extremely intelligent, a fine astute writer, very much on the ball. And with this one he’s absolutely right, given what’s evolving on the Opposition benches at present.
Proving Natz is so last century, maybe going beyond that even. Their petulant behaviour is quite consistent with the spiteful, spoilt brats they are. Definitely not constructive towards building a progressive NZ!
The loss of the tories is like a fascinating psychological experiment, they aren’t handling the jandal, trying not to be smug but from the side lines it’s so satisfying to watch.
Meanwhile Jacinda ‘burns’ trump, another proud moment for NZ, I love her style.
“I said, ‘You know’, laughing, ‘no-one marched when I was elected’.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11944901
@ Cinny (1.3) … demonstrating we have a gem in Jacinda 🙂
Wrong time for the left to get too comfortable.
The right don’t have as many disparate factions to put together to mount clear opposition. They are building.
That’s such a great snip for where we are at with the new govt.
Jacinda is transformed into the Princess and NZ the sleeping beauty. We awake and rub our eyes, and find the world full of promise. Promises that we must ensure are met with adequate action.
That action will turn act into the tiny thing it is in reality after the bluster and false authority of academic degrees fired into the world to do harm like intercontinental missiles. Let’s have some kiwi thinking and doing which takes in world information and then is decided by us as well informed, pragmatic people with a humanist and sustainable vision. All this from one kiss.
Thanks Jacinda and the Labour people who supported her. Make these changes – don’t rest just because you have Labour on the Benches again. We have to face the future and its grim. We can only survive it with spirit intact, working, talking, co-operating with practical, kind people. Don’t look over to National. It will probably take another generation before they can tear themselves away from their arrogance and confabulations.
Yep the youthquake has actually happened it is just not often visible – lorde and Jacinda showed it last night. I too have been so heartened by the generational change. Many elders are struggling with this and not all are righties. I love it and I love passing the baton to those who are going to be here making it happen. Thank you Jacinda and labour and the greens and nzf. Thank you for giving hope for a better future.
Better to the left than the right or god forbid neo libs. Only time will tell whether the same mistakes are made. Not learning from the past, not looking at the everlasting principle of balance .
Balance is interesting – is it equilibrium or a settled oscillation or an eventual tendency to always keep moving towards entropy. Politically for me it is being hard left and being okay that others think differently. ☺
AES (armchair expert syndrome) seems to be hard wired into the Kiwi DNA. The older you are the stronger its presence is felt.
Stuff and other like news sites are rampant with it in the comments section.
Spot on Sanctuary…….without particular articluation the mind is certainly just somehow quietly conscious of the ‘old’ thing. Neh!…….boring.
Re the new house valuations in Ak
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11944807
Colliers national director research and consulting, Alan McMahon says
He said wages had not risen in line with house prices and not everyone could afford a million-dollar property, so many would be looking to the cheaper suburbs.
No shit sherlock!!!
Green party are today in the middle of a “minor” scrap over “waka jumping” .
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11944783
Part of my soul belongs as a Green Party member, as my family came home to NZ in 1998 after 11yrs in Canada & USA and NZ was on the verge of voting in a new Labour ‘lead’ Government, and my familly joined the ‘alliance/green membership ‘mob’ as they were at that crazy time a very credible lot and had some high profile members in both ‘fledgling’ parties.
The alliance people sadly had dropped away since then, but we still have an alliance with some HB members today.
The greens have now ’emerged as another style of Political Party than they were when we joined them in 1999, and like most others we are all still confused about their whole strategy today.
That having said, I have always agreed with the ‘core’ environmental’ planks and always will but I do seriously miss Jeanettee Fitszimmons and the late Rod Donald whom we all met several times in Napier and today as said we are very distanced from today’s “new green party” members.
Our heart will always be ‘green’ because they are seriously needed here, especially during the current “global rot” setting in with the savengers who are stealing everything from all countries for profit.
With assets like water, oil, and many other commodities that are being extracted at such a blind rate that our future is a peril as is the climate that we all depend upon.
James Shaw we do like now as he seems to be a very level headed individual.
We hope he takes control of the green party core members and puts out a statement that all is progressing between labour and the green party over this “hickup” and the so called “horse trading” claims over “waka jumping” is just not a big issue as stated but constructive discussion was always on the table over what to do about the side issue that has emerged.
Jeanette Fitsimmons re emerged publocly when Turei was being pilloried. To say she is not supportive of the social justice aspect of Green policy requires more evifence than this cleangreen. If that is what you are alluding to.
Disagreement is healthy. Within and between parties. That Nats seem to have so few internal disagreement suggests either a village of the dammed type caucus or self interest is so embedded they sit on their hands in return for the power and position.
The Greens are outside Cabinet. That means they can differ from the Government on issues. Until we all mature in this respect we cannot expect politicians to.
Hi Tracey,
“To say she (jeanette) is not supportive of the social justice”
NoNoNo, tracey, we do not ‘infer’ Jeanette is not supportive of social justice at all, you missed our point.
Jeanette is a very warm caring person, she came to napier to meet us over the truck gridlock issue on Napier roads back in 2001 and walked along the Pirimai suburb with our committee to inspect the amount of noisy trucks rattling down the HB Expressway past the closeby houses that are threatening our residents health and wellbeing.
Jeanette wrote a column in the HB Today after saying it was the worst designed dangerous residential highway through a city she had even seen.
http://www.pce.parliament.nz/media/pdfs/Hawkes-Bay-Expressway-Noise-and-air-quality-issues-June-2005.pdf
This was a significant win for our residents then and jeanette will always be admired for her support of our call for social justice for our community deeply still today affected by the truck gridlock we have worse now since national destroyed our rail services in 2012.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1302/S00183/kiwirail-admits-lack-of-maintenance-led-to-wash-out.htm
Greens were very rail supportive as NZF is.
Sorry to have misunderstood
That Herald item above was just building something out of nothing, comparatively. Every decision or thought that the Greens make will be put under a microscope.
And I couldn’t find an author’s name on it. Just basically scrapings.
Reading that article, it strikes me that the problem is not the Greens appallingly bad use of email – or non-actions – since there is no statement from them included.
It is the swiftness of denigrating replies from Andrew Little, Winston Peters, and Shane Jones.
How hard is it to say – “Well, that must be part of an internal discussion because they have not made an approach to the coalition/our party yet. We’ll wait until they do before passing a comment”?
There appears to be no self-discipline being shown here.
I do struggle to think someone cannot send an email to the correct place. It doesn’t take much to check it and it’s not exactly new technology and there are plenty of examples where people have got it wrong with major publicity.
That’s true, but the Greens admin embarassment will be a stronger media target than many of the official policies put out by the last government.
This is a small issue, which could have easily been deflected by the other parties.
Yes I wish these parties would support each other better.
The problem is with email lists that are not obvious until pulled down. There may be numbers of people on them. Better to have individual receipients rather than mass postings.
Should be more trading, not less.
Politicians need to do actual political work,.
newbie MPs like Golriz are entitled to fuck up once.
> newbie MPs like Golriz are entitled to fuck up once.
I’d say Golriz’s stance on Manus was that once, this is twice
A.
Green party are today in the middle of a “minor” scrap over “waka jumping” .
I don’t think so. I think it’s much more likely that the Herald are shit stirring. I wrote this in DR last night.
Hmm, let’s tease this out a bit.
It’s not a leak, apparently the email got sent to the media by mistake.
The Herald cherry picked a bit of the email,
The Green Party’s justice spokeswoman Golriz Ghahraman, in an internal email accidentally sent to Fairfax, floated the idea of trying to garner support for a National Parihaka Day – the subject of a Green private member’s bill.
That’s The Herald’s interpretation.
Here’s the actual words,
“The Government won’t have the numbers to pass the [waka-jumping] legislation without us, and if we decided to oppose it then they would need to consider other options such as approaching the National Party, who opposed the 2005 bill,” the email says.
“Opposing the bill would cause political tensions, given the inclusion of the bill in the Labour-NZ First coalition agreement.
“Our Confidence and Supply Agreement gives us the independence to choose to vote against it. Supporting the bill would be seen as changing and weakening a long-standing and public party position. It would risk criticism from our core supporters.”
To me that looks like the Greens working through a dilemma and in one email one MP has laid out some of the issues.
During the parallel coalition negotiations, Green’s co-leader James Shaw put his faith in Jacinda Ardern to ensure that there was nothing in the Labour-NZF deal that the Greens would object to – though he conceded there might be policies that he might not be comfortable with.
No shit. Part of the value of the set up is that the Greens are free to vote how they want on things not covered in their agreement with Labour. This is how MMP works as designed.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters poured scorn on horse-trading tactics.
“We don’t horse trade.
This is interesting. Because I would have thought that negotiating around support for legislation is exactly what was intended by the deals that allowed Labour to form government.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said doing a deal with the Greens over waka-jumping had not come up “in direct conversation”.
She said she has not given much thought to a National Parihaka Day.
“I certainly am pleased to see greater observance of those days of New Zealand’s history. I think we should encourage that. Whether or not it becomes a day off is an entirely different issue.”
So not a big deal for Labour. Little called it horse-trading but other than that where are the ripples of discontent from Labour?
A spokesperson for the Green Party said the email was an “internal document that was sent in error”.
“It’s not surprising that Labour Party and Green Party MPs are having these kinds of constructive conversations and working together; in fact, that’s what New Zealanders expect of government parties.
“It’s commonplace for ministers and MPs to have these kind of conversations – that will continue,” the spokesperson said.
That’s what I would expect.
I don’t know what happened. But it does look like the Herald is shit stirring (and yes, no name to the article).
Little should HTFU.
Let’s see if he still has his horse-trading dignity left once the Muriwhenua have finished with him.
weka, Good comment there I go along with that fully.
If Winston wanted the Greens to be on board with everything, perhaps he should have got the Greens in on the coalition.
I doubt nats never accidentally sent an email to the media. I also doubt the media pounced on it without letting them know.
Yeah. Looks exactly like what I would expect a support partner to a coalition to looking at.
I guess the anonymous fool at the Herald is just another political illiterate. Don’t they publish that similar idiotic cheap from Howling Mike Hosking as well?
That Herald article doesn’t feel right. I can’t see any of the quoted people talking to the Herald like that. They all know what the Herald is, I’d expect them to be far more circumspect and guarded in their replies.
It looks a bit fishy.
Very concerning that the Greens would consider opposing the ‘waka jumping’ bill.
Even worse wanting something so tokenistic as some sort of weird leverage. That thinking (tokenistic) is what has caused Greens to plummet to 6% . It started with red peak taking attention from more important issues.
A holiday or name change might be symbolic to those on a $200k salary but to voter’s they get pretty disillusioned when the party the vote for’s individuals get bribed or are just so stupid they jump ship and derail the democratic process and the Greens are prepared to oppose legislation to stop that.
For MMP to work, voters need to know if they vote for a minor party they will not jump ship to support another for their own personal gain.
Greens should be unconditionally supporting the Waka jumping legislation.
Whether they want to put National Parihaka Day through should be independent of very important legislation to keep integrity in the democratic process.
And also the reason it’s necessary is that the National party have a history of derailing democracy by using it to pick off weak minded MP’s.
Why would the Greens support helping National pick off weak minded MP’s by allowing this waka jumping loophole to remain?
What is wrong with an electorate mp jumping ship? and should backbenchers not be allowed to hold party leaders to account.
This law will make representative democracy even less representative. That the greens would trade away the democratic nature of party positions for a national holiday is strange. I thought they had more principles than that
The proposal affects list* MPs, to preserve the proportionality of Parliament, as per election results.
*Nice try. Or are you going to plead ignorance?
+1 One Anonymous Bloke
It’s to protect voter’s rights of representation NOT MP’s.
Have you actually seen the proposed bill?
I certainly haven’t seen any wording and the only thing I have seen said merely that Little was considering it.
Can you provide a link to the bill as it will be put before the house?
As a side note I suspect there would not be a Green Party in Parliament if such a bill had existed in 1997.
The Green Party leaders at the time were in Parliament as part of the Alliance. If they had announced, as they did, that they were going to stand independently in 1999 I suspect that Jim Anderton would have demanded that they be expelled from Parliament, and that they would have been replaced by people he thought would remain loyal to him.
If so I don’t think that the Green Party would have remained in Parliament in 1999. As it was, even with all the publicity and travel subsidies available to sitting MPs they only just scraped back in on their own. Both Fitzsimmons winning Coromandel and the party getting over 5% only happened when the specials came in and got them over the line in both cases.
If they hadn’t survived then I think they would have been gone for good. The record of parties getting in without already holding seats is not great is it?
Source.
So you haven’t read the bill, but you suspect that it would have destroyed the greens in the 1990s? Why do you suspect that the waka-jumping bill will apply to people who announce they will run for another party in the future, without actually leaving or withdrawing support from their current party until the campaign?
Given that it didn’t stop Anderton doing exactly that in 2002.
Alwyn’s concerned.
Really? Gosh, that makes me lose all faith in the Greens and Labour.
If an election were held tomorrow, I would most certainly vote National.
Thank goodness someone opened my eyes to the looming catastrophe of rampant, totalitarian communism that this government is inflicting upon us.
Ardern is the next Robert Mugabe!
LOL
What I did see about a proposed bill was that Winston wanted to be able to expel people from a party and that they would then be kicked out of the Parliament.
It wasn’t, from what I heard about it, intended to be limited to people who actually left the party of their own accord. It appeared to be intended it to be anyone a party leader was pissed off about.
“One of the more surprising matters included in the Labour/NZ First coalition agreement is their joint commitment to pass a ‘Waka Jumping’ Bill”. Such legislation effectively requires any MP who leaves her or his party, whether willingly or not, to also leave Parliament”.
:” But note that this approach puts an awful lot of power into the hands of a party leader (assuming that she or he still has the backing of her or his party). ”
Both these extracts are from a RNZ interview with Law Professor Andrew Geddis.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/on-the-inside/342350/waka-jumping-law-a-cost-to-democracy
That is why I wanted to see what any bill was actually going to say.
The source OAB referred me to doesn’t have the final detail which appears to still be under consideration. Geddis however didn’t seem to think it was intended to be limited to List MPs only.
As for Jim Anderton. He and the rest of the party ended up pretending they were all still part of one party, even though they were setting up opposition groups.
As Geddis also said in my link
“Because neither grouping wanted to leave Parliament, they were forced to pretend they remained one united party even as Jim Anderton set about creating his own new one outside of it”.
Of course I wouldn’t care, NOW, whether the “Green” party vanished. I would have been disappointed in 1999 though when they seemed to be a predominately environmental group rather than left wing party with only a peripheral interest in the environment. That is, at least to me, what they now seem to be.
Well then, according to part 9 of the NZFirst constitution, it appears you were misinformed.
You needn’t be concerned at all.
In that case Professor Geddis would be wrong wouldn’t he?
However what is to say that the Party Constitution would continue to apply if NZF get their bill passed? They are very to amend after all.
And who is going to hold that the Party Constitution would, or could, override the law of the land? If there was a conflict between what the Constitution said and what the law said the law is always going to win.
The NZF party used to have, I understand, a clause that any MP who left the Party agreed to resign from Parliament and pay the party $300,000 while about it.
It is mentioned here
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/243707/nz-first-radically-changes-its-rules
According to Professor Geddis, quoted in this link, such a clause would be tossed out by a court if they tried to enforce it. That would seem to be the reason they want a law to do it for them.
As I said, it appears you were misinformed.
And you also confuse Winston committing an act beyond his powers in the party constitution (as you put it “Winston wanted to be able to expel people from a party and that they would then be kicked out of the Parliament”, when he does not even have this power under the party constitution) and there being a conflict between the party constitution and the law.
So again, your concern for the job security of the poor NZ1 MPs whom you believe serve at the whim of a petulant and capricious Winston Peters shows that you fundamentally misunderstand both the situation and how democratic parties operate.
Foolish Alwyn, foolish,
I thought you were less argumentative than this.
Not only that, the poor sap hasn’t even figured out what the Green Party does after all this time.
Just sounds like an internal conversation that accidentally got released to the MSM and now the MSM are attacking like the good little National Party attack dogs they are.
I doubt if was going any further and probably wouldn’t have been policy but ideas do need to be discussed before hand whether they’re used or not.
interesting development!!!
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11944949
Australia opens door to New Zealand taking Manus Island refugees
The Australian Government has acknowledged that New Zealand could deal direct with Papua New Guinea over taking some of the Manus Island refugees – and Australia could not block such a deal.
Australia’s Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has opened the door to a possible resettlement deal between the two sovereign states – but he indicated Australia would not be pleased.
I think that the headline and the Herald interpretation in para 2 are different to the real story as expressed by the Australian Minister.
All he really said was that New Zealand, as a Sovereign Country, can do whatever they like. He then said that if they do they had better think very hard about it as Australia wasn’t going to like it at all.
His statement was not a great deal different to saying that North Korea can test nuclear weapons if they wish to. What could Australia, or anyone else except China actually do to stop them? However don’t expect Australia to allow trade with North Korea if they continue to do so.
He was just about as undiplomatic about it as you can be. I was over there recently and there were definite signs that Australia was going to make things even harder for New Zealanders over there than they are already. Expect having to get a specific visa before you go will be the next step if we let the Manus Islanders into New Zealand I fear.
And National just nodded… yes sir… yes sir…
I think I just felt an earthquake in Hollywood.
Gal Gadot, heroine of Wonder Woman, has announced that the main producer (financial backer) of the previous Wonder Woman will not take part in Wonder Woman II.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gal-gadot-brett-ratner-wonder-woman_us_5a08716ee4b0e37d2f381736?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
This is after well-publicised accusations against Ratner of serious sexual impropriety.
Now, if anyone can remember when a producer was removed from a blockbuster Hollywood franchise for sexual impropriety because the lead acress demanded it, could you all please let me know.
And this is getting cut out of a machine that was about to start printing hundreds of millions more dollars in profit, based on the track record of the last one.
Money, finally, did not talk.
As it stands, this looks like Wonder Woman just hit real life., very hard, and caused an earhtquake.
Fine work Ms Gadot
good news, but the earthquake has been going on for some time now 😉
Gal Gadot …Israeli settler Zionist who tweeted her support of the IDF in 2014 while they were according the UN enquiry were killing 1462 civilians (at least) including 495 children methinks wonder woman has mud on her cape.
Yes. The good news isn’t about Gadot, it’s about Ratner being removed.
If we were to remove every actor who supported a nation state that committed war atrocities, there’d be no Hollywood.
The ethnic cleansing ,atrocities , denial of human rights et cetera over a 69 year period doesn’t this make Israel some sort of record holder? Shouldn’t those who support this be held to account or is it ok because of her “feminist” victory? Or is it that so many Hollywood figures are Zionist?
Does that make it ok?
Flippant, but, Gal Gadot punches a Neo Nazi. Who you gonna cheer for?
Good question…where’s the Palestinian in the story?
I presume they would also want to punch a Nazi
And of course they would want to punch Nazi Zionism but let’s not worry about those Palestinians. Best we clean Hollywood first…….
Well the Palestinians have got great reason to hate Nazism after all it was the western worlds guilt at the Holocaust which led to the formation of Israel and thus the Palestinian slow motion Holocaust – still ongoing after 69 years.
The Nazis hold all the records for industrialised murder and disenfranchisement of a people.
The Zionists hold the record (in living memory ) for the disenfranchisement and destruction of a people – in the length of its campaign – 69 years and counting.
“And of course they would want to punch Nazi Zionism but let’s not worry about those Palestinians. Best we clean Hollywood first…….”
One misogynist, pervert, abuser at a time
GROPERS
No. 2: Bill O’Reilly
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/21/business/media/bill-oreilly-sexual-harassment.html
http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/23/media/bill-oreilly-misconduct-allegations/index.html
“GROPERS” is researched and presented by GroperWatch, a division of Daisycutter Sports Inc.
No.1 George Herbert Walker Bush
Serial sexual predator Bill O’Reilly goes
Full Psycho in taped rant to the New York Times
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/10/23/1709244/-Serial-sexual-predator-Bill-O-Reilly-goes-Full-Psycho-in-taped-rant-to-the-New-York-Times
Mr Twyford
Re http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11944720
Chinese speculators are having one last shot at the cherry.
Stop them act now, cut out their cancer.
We owe them nothing, they owe us our houses.
You have the mandate and the capability, strike a meaningful blow and send a message don’t wait until Xmas, do it next week.
Every one sold is one we have to build.
[Letting this racist shit through, only because it’s a fairly stark example of the type of racist and xenophobic rhetoric some (too many) in this country seem to be fairly comfortable with.] – Bill
Isn’t that both Labour and Green policy to stop overseas sales of residential property??
It’s the Natz that wants NZ to be a one world monopoly board.
Personally think they need to include all Land including farms and commercial property. Just let foreigners buy the rights on leases. (Take a note from China, no land owed by foreign interests, any business interests have to partner with Chinese firms etc)
Seriously, Bill, I think you’re being over dramatic there. tv1980 specifically said Chinese speculators, not simply Chinese. Despite the questionable data begrudgingly collected by the last government, cheap Chinese capital has made Auckland unliveable for many families.
It’s been a serious problem for some time along with the same behaviour from Australian speculators. To sit there in a foreign country, as a foreign citizen, shopping online for Kiwi houses like you’re on eBay is not acceptable when such a major issue has developed.
The ethnicity of the speculators is irrelevant.
But is it irrelevant in this case? Chinese off-shore investors are a unique case both here and in Canada I’ve heard.
China is not a fully democratised country. Corruption is high. Unreliable export products. Weak labour laws. Unsustainable growth.
All this combined into a lot of cheap money and a lot of cowboys entering the NZ domestic property market through websites dedicated to selling Kiwi houses on the internet and through the relationships with new immigrants who acted as proxy buyers.
So desperate was the last government to maintain growth figures at any cost they encouraged this form of foreign investment whether by direct off-shore marketing or by proxy purchasing.
Now, foreign investment has its place but not in the domestic housing market at a time when young families are being shunted from pillar to post because of house-flipping in an over heated market.
A problem which is entirely independent of ethnicity.
A separate set of problems, some of which are of concern in terms of foreign policy and maintaining local freedoms.
The problem for people that want to talk about speculators from specific countries is that NZ is generally pretty racist towards people from some places and not others. Each time we have this conversation we have people saying shit that harms specific ethnicities. If we want to have the conversation then we need to take more care of that side of things. That’s the problem here, the lack of care for Chinese people, especially those that live here including people whose families have been here as long as any Pākehā ones.
So if you want to talk about Chinese speculators, my suggestion is actively push back against the racism, and talk more about the problems of speculators from places we’re not as racist about. At least then there is an indication of trying to not buy into or allow racist narratives.
Just talk about ‘speculators’ with no connection here.
The house buying ploy by many overseas financiers was little different to being a place to park ill-gotten gains, as in trusts and Panama Papers. Only in this case they were buying our shelter from under our feet, in the likely expectation they would not be closely scrutinised and make good capital gains. Pity about the stability of the NZhousing prices.
If Australian speculators are also a problem the tv framing it as a chibese problem is racist
Australian speculators have also been an issue, anecdotal stories have been around of wealthy housewives flying in groups to New Zealand for the weekend and buying 5 properties each.
As has been made clear by just about everyone, Australians are untouchable for whatever reason. But this doesn’t mean the effect by off-shore Chinese speculators be ignored because it might offend someone. They are added fuel to the fire.
I know about the aussie real estate trips. Anyone who speaks so vehemently about chinese speculators above and doesnt know ozzies are a problem too need expect that their ignorance may be named racism
I know about the Aussie real estate trips too but see if you can find anyone in authority, anyone at all, anywhere willing to put a stop to it.
I would.
Well i assume they are exempt from any other foreign ownership rules cos of CER. We are being royally by Australia.
Stop them act now, cut out their cancer.
Putting aside the grammatical foot in mouth aspect of that, what I took tv1980 to be saying at the time is that Chinese are a cancer that need to be stopped and cut out.
I took the cancer as being speculation, but either way it’s still either directly or indirectly racist. Tbh, I saw it in the moderation queue and left it there for someone else to deal with 😉
TV1980 -Wasn’t there a report recently that it is mostly Kiwi investors who are the culprit? Easy money (perceived) no work, sounds about right- yes?
Most foreign nationals settling here feel the owe something in return to the country and will not be inclined to sh.. in the new nest. See it for what it is please.
16yo calls adults to account
Brilliant – a Scottish lassie with her head firmly screwed on it seems. One of the more endearing characteristics of the Scots in general.
Gordon Campbell and Nationals ” nanny state ”
http://werewolf.co.nz/2017/11/gordon-campbell-on-the-centre-rights-love-of-the-nanny-state-label/
Mr Corbyn, brother enemy number one.
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/2017/11/16/mainstream-journalist-accidentally-lets-slip-ordered-take-corbyn-image/
mosa
That was interesting link:
IIRC Britain spends 49 billion pounds on paying its interest each year, which exceeds its Defence and Housing Budgets. Now is that good financial management? I’m on the edge of not having any credit on my card. That isn’t good on my part. But all those clever bastards at the top of the heap? Does it inspire confidence in our leaders there or their followers here that they are in so deep?
What happened to the good advice that you should pay within a month all that you borrowed to keep the interest down? And to be aware that any cash borrowed becomes an immediate interest bearing debt.
Nope, never saw this coming.
/
(CNN – )A total of 210,000 gallons of oil leaked Thursday from the Keystone Pipeline in Marshall County, South Dakota, the pipeline’s operator, TransCanada, said.
Crews shut down the pipeline Thursday morning and officials are investigating the cause of the leak.
This is the largest Keystone oil spill to date in South Dakota, said Brian Walsh, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
In April 2016, there was a 400-barrel release — or 16,800 gallons — with the majority of the oil cleanup completed in two months, Walsh said.
About 5,000 barrels of oil spilled Thursday.
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/16/us/keystone-pipeline-leak/index.html
Shocking!
Private enterprise being the most efficient that it can be – which just isn’t good enough.
Collins makes it personal – is this the way to gain votes?
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2017/11/refugee-deal-isn-t-student-politics-judith-collins.html
caucus votes, yes…..guess she feels the need to show Bridges he has some competition…..how long will Bill be willing to fight them all off?
Ambition undressed and it aint pretty
You have to wonder if those present all laughed when Judith Collins, of all people, started pontificating about tact and diplomacy. I particularly loved this bit:
She said Ms Ardern needed to “learn from Winston Peters that you actually do have to be a little bit more statesman-like when you’re overseas and representing New Zealand”.
What? I thought representing NZ overseas meant bringing your husband along on overseas trips so you can use your position to help his business? This is just confusing…
LOL
Going for the top job I guess.
Landmark study links Tory austerity to 120,000 deaths
Government is accused of ‘economic murder’
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/tory-austerity-deaths-study-report-people-die-social-care-government-policy-a8057306.html
Is this a flip-flop?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/98716250/Minister-Iain-Lees-Galloway-says-replacing-Hobbit-law-will-be-a-joint-solution
nope
After 9 years are you finally sick of flip flops? Trying croc now?
Promising maiden speech from Labour list MP Liz Craig.
Child poverty will definitely be a focus for her.